Featured Posts Configuration Guide

How to Mark Posts as Featured

To mark any blog post as featured, simply add featured: true to the front matter:

---
title: "Your Post Title"
date: 2025-01-01
featured: true
summary: "A brief description of your post content that will appear in the blog archive."
category: 
    - Your Category
tags:
    - your tags
---

Adding Post Summaries for Better Display

Method 1: Summary Field (Recommended)

Add a summary field to your front matter for a user-friendly approach:

---
title: "Your Post Title"
summary: "This description will appear in the blog archive, making it easy for readers to understand what your post is about."
---

Method 2: Excerpt Field (Technical - Backward Compatibility)

You can still use the traditional excerpt field:

---
title: "Your Post Title"
excerpt: "Technical excerpt field for Jekyll compatibility."
---

Method 3: Excerpt Separator (Advanced)

Use the excerpt separator \n\n (two blank lines) in your content:

---
title: "Your Post Title"
---

This is your summary content that will appear in the archive.


This content appears after the separator and won't show in the archive.

Why “Summary” Instead of “Excerpt”?

User-friendly: “Summary” is more intuitive for content creators
Clear purpose: Everyone understands what a summary should contain
Better UX: More descriptive field name for non-technical users
Backward compatible: Still supports the traditional “excerpt” field

Configuration Options

In _config.yml, you can control the featured posts behavior:

# Featured Posts Settings
featured_posts:
  enabled                : true     # enable/disable featured posts section
  count                  : 3        # number of featured posts to show
  show_on_archive        : true     # show featured section on blog archive page

# Excerpt Settings
read_more                : "enabled" # enables "Read more" links
show_excerpts            : true      # ensures excerpts are processed
excerpt_separator        : "\n\n"   # double newline separator

Options Explained:

enabled: Set to false to completely disable featured posts
count: How many featured posts to show in the featured section (default: 3)
show_on_archive: Whether to show the featured section on the blog archive page
read_more: Set to “enabled” to show “Read more” links on summaries
show_excerpts: Ensures Jekyll processes summaries properly

Visual Indicators

GitHub Pages Compatibility

The system includes multiple fallbacks for reliability:

Primary: Uses summary field (user-friendly)
Secondary: Falls back to excerpt field (backward compatibility)
Tertiary: Automatic content truncation if no summary is found
Enhanced processing for consistent display across platforms

Summary Writing Tips

Good Summary Examples:

summary: "Learn how to implement TabR, a retrieval-augmented model for tabular data that improves prediction accuracy."

summary: "My key takeaways from Stanford Business School's MBA program condensed into actionable business strategies."

summary: "A comprehensive guide to hyperparameter tuning using Optuna, with practical examples and best practices."

What Makes a Good Summary:

✅ 15-25 words ideal length
✅ Describes what the reader will learn
✅ Uses active, engaging language
✅ Includes key topics/benefits
❌ Avoid technical jargon
❌ Don’t make it too long
❌ Don’t be vague or generic

Current Featured Posts

The following posts are currently marked as featured:

TabR (Tabular DL)
Stanford Business School Notes (Business)
GPTopic (Topic Modeling)

Troubleshooting

If posts show full content instead of summaries on GitHub Pages:

Add explicit summaries to your post front matter using the summary field
Check your _config.yml has read_more: "enabled"
Verify excerpt_separator is set to "\n\n"
Use the summary field method rather than relying on separators

Quick Reference

New Post Template:

---
title: "Your Amazing Post Title"
date: 2025-01-01
featured: false  # Set to true for featured posts
summary: "Brief, engaging description of what readers will learn from this post."
category: 
    - Your Category
tags:
    - relevant, tags, here
---

Your post content starts here...

Bishnu Khadka