A Jekyll plugin to make front matter optional for Markdown files

Out of the box, Jekyll requires that any markdown file have YAML front matter (key/value pairs separated by two sets of three dashes) in order to be processed and converted to HTML.

While that behavior may be helpful for large, complex sites, sometimes it's easier to simply add a plain markdown file and have it render without fanfare.

This plugin does just that. Any Markdown file in your site's source will be treated as a Page and rendered as HTML, even if it doesn't have YAML front matter.

1. Add the following to your site's Gemfile:

   group :jekyll_plugins do
     gem 'jekyll-optional-front-matter'
   end

2. Install the plugin.
   • Using Bundler.

     $ bundler install

   • Using Gem.

     $ # Install in your user's home directory.
     $ gem install jekyll-optional-front-matter --user-install
     $ # Install for root user.
     $ sudo gem install jekyll-optional-front-matter

3. Add the following to your site's config file:

   plugins:
     - jekyll-optional-front-matter

Note: If you are using a Jekyll version less than 3.5.0, use the gems key instead of plugins.

Pages are added in the same place in the name-based processing order as if including front matter. This is important for templates and plugins relying on this sequence, because page.content will already be HTML for pages rendered earlier than the current page, and Markdown for pages that are not yet rendered.

In order to preserve backwards compatibility, the plugin does not recognize a short list of common meta files.

If you want Markdown files like your README, CONTRIBUTING file, CODE_OF_CONDUCT, or LICENSE, etc., you'll need to explicitly add YAML front matter to the file, or add it to your config's list of include files, e.g.:

include:
  - CONTRIBUTING.md
  - README.md

You can configure this plugin in _config.yml by adding to the optional_front_matter key.

By default the original markdown files will be included as static pages in the output. To remove them from the output, set the remove_originals key to true:

optional_front_matter:
  remove_originals: true

Even if the plugin is enabled (e.g., via the :jekyll_plugins group in your Gemfile) you can disable it by adding the following to your site's config:

optional_front_matter:
  enabled: false