GitHub Pages variant blog

What changed

A standalone, GitHub Pages-compatible Jekyll blog was added at the repository root alongside the existing SSSF material. It models each Markdown post as a variant of a logical article: shared article_id and article_title metadata groups related posts, while language, format, and variant_rank describe and order the variants. The site has no CMS, database, accounts, comments, scheduled publishing, custom domain, or custom application server.

The sample Ship Small article contains four linked variants: English short, English long, Chinese short, and Chinese long. The home page groups these as one logical article and lists all four links; every post page renders navigation to its related variants.

Files carrying the change

• Gemfile pins GitHub Pages tooling and Ruby-compatible dependency constraints for local builds.
• _config.yml defines the site metadata, baseurl: "", the <account>.github.io URL placeholder, Markdown/permalink settings, and generated-site exclusions.
• index.html groups site.posts by article_id and lists each group’s variants.
• _layouts/default.html provides the shared HTML shell and root link; _layouts/post.html displays article metadata and sorted related-variant links.
• _posts/2025-01-10-ship-small.md, _posts/2025-01-11-ship-small-long.md, _posts/2025-01-12-ship-small-zh-short.md, and _posts/2025-01-13-ship-small-zh-long.md provide the four sample variants with explicit /articles/ship-small/<language>/<format>/ permalinks.
• assets/css/style.css supplies responsive styling, readable English/Chinese typography, and visible link focus states.
• README.md documents setup, authoring metadata, local commands, and the Git publishing workflow.
• specs/225dd545_jekyll-variant-blog.md records the implementation scope and verification checklist.

Use and verification

For deployment, rename or create the GitHub repository as <account>.github.io, replace the url placeholder in _config.yml, push the default branch, and configure GitHub Pages to deploy that branch from the repository root. This produces https://<account>.github.io/ rather than a project-site subpath.

For local checking, install Ruby/Bundler and run:

bundle install
bundle exec jekyll serve
bundle exec jekyll build

Preview the displayed local URL and inspect _site/. A new variant belongs in a date-prefixed file under _posts/ with a shared article_id/article_title for an existing article, a unique stable variant_rank, language, format, and an explicit unique permalink. A new article_id starts a new logical article. The documented Git loop is branch, author metadata/content, build and preview, commit, push, merge into the deployment branch, push, then check the root Pages URL and deployment status.

The diff adds the build and preview instructions but does not record an executed build result; run bundle exec jekyll build to verify the current environment.