Blog Features & Customizations

This document outlines all the features and customizations added to your Jekyll blog.

🎨 Styling Enhancements

Modern Design

• Gradient backgrounds - Beautiful gradient header and background
• Card-based layout - Posts displayed in attractive cards with hover effects
• Smooth animations - Fade-in animations and hover transitions
• Professional color scheme - Blue/green gradient theme perfect for bioinformatics
• Shadow effects - Subtle shadows for depth and modern look

Responsive Design

• Mobile-first - Fully responsive for all screen sizes
• Tablet optimized - Great experience on tablets
• Print styles - Clean print layout

🚀 New Features

1. Navigation Menu

• Clean navigation bar with active page highlighting
• Links to Home, About, Archive, and RSS feed
• Smooth hover effects

2. Social Media Links

• GitHub, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Email icons in header
• Configure in _config.yml under social: section
• Hover animations

3. Reading Time Estimates

• Automatically calculates reading time based on word count
• Shows “X min read” on post list and individual posts
• Based on average reading speed of 180 words/minute

4. Table of Contents (TOC)

• Automatic table of contents for posts
• Enable by adding toc: true to post front matter
• Styled in a nice box with smooth scrolling links

5. Related Posts

• Automatically shows related posts at the bottom of each post
• Based on categories
• Shows up to 3 related posts

6. Archive Page

• Complete archive of all posts organized by year
• Easy navigation to find old posts
• Accessible from navigation menu

7. About Page

• Professional about page template
• Customize with your information
• Contact information section

8. Enhanced Code Highlighting

• Dark theme for code blocks (Prism Tomorrow theme)
• Support for multiple languages:
  • Python
  • Bash/Shell
  • R
  • Groovy
  • YAML
  • JSON
• Line numbers support
• Better contrast and readability

9. Improved Post Display

• Reading time on post list
• Better tag styling with gradient backgrounds
• Enhanced excerpt display
• Smooth hover effects on post cards

10. Better Typography

• Improved line spacing
• Better heading hierarchy
• Enhanced blockquote styling
• Professional table styling

📝 How to Use Features

Enable Table of Contents

Add to your post front matter:

toc: true

Configure Social Links

Edit _config.yml:

social:
  github: yourusername
  twitter: yourusername
  linkedin: yourusername
  email: your.email@example.com

Customize Colors

Edit CSS variables in assets/css/main.css:

:root {
  --primary-color: #1976D2;
  --secondary-color: #4CAF50;
  --accent-color: #FF9800;
  /* ... */
}

🎯 Best Practices

1. Use tags and categories - Helps with organization and related posts
2. Add excerpts - Makes post list more engaging
3. Use TOC for long posts - Improves navigation
4. Include images - They’ll be automatically styled nicely
5. Use code blocks - Syntax highlighting is automatic

📱 Mobile Optimization

• Navigation collapses nicely on mobile
• Touch-friendly buttons and links
• Optimized font sizes
• Responsive images
• Fast loading

🔧 Technical Details

• CSS Variables - Easy theming system
• Modern CSS - Flexbox, Grid, and animations
• Accessibility - Semantic HTML and ARIA labels
• Performance - Optimized CSS and minimal JavaScript
• SEO Ready - Proper meta tags and structure

🚀 Future Enhancements (Optional)

Consider adding:

• Search functionality
• Dark mode toggle
• Comment system (Disqus, Giscus)
• Newsletter signup
• Analytics integration
• Social sharing buttons

Enjoy your beautiful, feature-rich blog! 🎉