28 Sep 2021
This blog is a static HTML website. That means the files contained within it are
kept rather lean. Everything is either copies or written by hand so keeping
the non-blog contents to a minimum is a plus. To that end, I create two (2) files
that can be used as templates for posts. I placed them in a directory called
.templates (super creative I know).
Next, I checked the website because I wanted to see how these files were served.
It turns out that they weren't served at all. I discovered that GitHub
Pages hides files and directories that begin with the underscore _
and dot . characters.
I was pretty sure that I was not the only person who discovered this tidbit. With just a bit of searching I found the reason why these files are hidden. GitHub Pages processes your repository using Jekyll. Jekyll hides these prefixed files and directories because they are special to that tool.
To serve or not to serve? I decided to serve my newly minted template files by using
inserting the .nojekyll file and having my static website be, well, static.
I am sure that in some fashion pushes will be processed faster.
The offical announcement of the feature was made in 2009 on *The GitHub Blog* - Bypassing Jekyll on GitHub Pages.
Stack Overflow had the following answers which tipped me off in the first place:
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