Customizing your Site

Introduction#

Hyde favours "Convention over Configuration" and comes preconfigured with sensible defaults. However, Hyde also strives to be modular and endlessly customizable if you need it. This page guides you through the many options available!

All the configuration files are stored in the config directory, and allow you to customize almost all aspects of your site. Each option is documented, so feel free to look through the files and get familiar with the options available to you.

Accessing Configuration Values#

Configuration API Recap#

HydePHP uses the same configuration system as Laravel. Here's a quick recap from the Laravel Documentation:

You may easily access your configuration values using the global config function from anywhere in your project code. The configuration values may be accessed using "dot notation" syntax, which includes the name of the file and option you wish to access.

1$value = config('hyde.name');

A default value may also be specified and will be returned if the configuration option does not exist:

1$value = config('hyde.name', 'HydePHP');

HydePHP also provides a strongly typed Config facade which extends the Laravel Config facade, but allows strict types:

1use Hyde\Facades\Config;
2 
3// Will always return a string, or it throws a TypeError
4$name = Config::getString('hyde.name', 'HydePHP'): string;

Dot Notation#

As seen in the example above, when referencing configuration options, we often use "dot notation" to specify the configuration file. For example, config('hyde.name') means that we are looking for the name option in the config/hyde.php file.

Front Matter or Configuration Files?#

In some cases, the same options can be set in the front matter of a page or in a configuration file. Both ways are always documented, and it's up to you to choose which one you prefer. Note that in most cases, if a setting is set in both the front matter and the configuration file, the front matter setting will take precedence.

A note on file paths#

When Hyde references files, especially when passing filenames between components, the file path is almost always relative to the root of the project. Specifying absolute paths yourself will likely lead to unforeseen problems.

Configuration Files Overview#

There are a few configuration files available in the config directory. All options are documented, so feel free to look through the files and get familiar with the options available to you.

Below are two tables over the different configuration files. Click on a file name to see the default file on GitHub.

HydePHP Configuration Files#

These are the main configuration files for HydePHP and lets you customize the look and feel of your site, as well as the behaviour of HydePHP itself. The main configuration file, hyde.php, is used for things ranging from site name and base URL to navigation menus and what features to enable.

Tip: The values in hyde.php can also be set in YAML by creating a hyde.yml file in the root of your project. See #yaml-configuration for more information.

Publishable Laravel & Package Configuration Files#

Since HydePHP is based on Laravel we also have a few configuration files related to them. As you most often don't need to edit any of these, unless you want to make changes to the underlying application, they are not present in the base HydePHP installation. However, you can publish them to your project by running php hyde publish:configs.

If any of these files are missing, you can run php hyde publish:configs to copy the default files to your project.

Configuration Options#

While all options are already documented within the files, here are some further explanations of some of the options.

RSS feed generation#

When enabled, an RSS feed containing all your Markdown blog posts will be generated when you compile your static site. Here are the default settings:

Filepath: config/hyde.php
 1'rss' => [
 2    // Should the RSS feed be generated?
 3    'enabled' => true,
 4 
 5    // What filename should the RSS file use?
 6    'filename' => 'feed.xml',
 7 
 8    // The channel description.
 9    'description' => env('SITE_NAME', 'HydePHP').' RSS Feed',
10],

Note that this feature requires that a site url is set!

Authors#

Hyde has support for adding authors in front matter, for example to automatically add a link to your website or social media profiles. However, it's tedious to have to add those to each and every post you make, and keeping them updated is even harder.

You can predefine authors in the Hyde config. When writing posts, just specify the username in the front matter, and the rest of the data will be pulled from a matching entry.

Example#

'authors' => [
    Author::create(
        username: 'mr_hyde', // Required username
        name: 'Mr. Hyde', // Optional display name
        website: 'https://hydephp.com' // Optional website URL
    ),
],

This is equivalent to the following front matter in a blog post:

1author:
2    username: mr_hyde
3    name: Mr. Hyde
4    website: https://hydephp.com

But you only have to specify the username:

1author: mr_hyde

Footer#

Most websites have a footer with copyright details and contact information. You probably want to change the Markdown to include your information, though you are of course welcome to keep the default attribution link!

The footer component is made up of a few levels of components, depending on how much you want to customize.

Customizing the Markdown text#

There are two ways to customize the footer text. First, you can set it in the configuration file:

Filepath: config/hyde.php
1'footer' => 'Site proudly built with [HydePHP](https://github.com/hydephp/hyde) 🎩',

If you don't want to write Markdown in the configuration file, you can create a Markdown file in your includes directory. When this file is found, it will be used instead of the configuration setting.

Filepath: resources/includes/footer.md
1Site proudly built with [HydePHP](https://github.com/hydephp/hyde) 🎩

In both cases the parsed Markdown will be rendered in the footer Blade component.

Customizing the Blade component#

The actual footer component is rendered using the layouts/footer.blade.php Blade template.

In this template we automatically render the configured footer Markdown text. If you want to change this behaviour, for example, HydePHP.com uses a more sophisticated footer, simply publish the footer component.

Disabling the footer entirely#

If you don't want to have a footer on your site, you can set the 'footer' configuration option to false.

Filepath: config/hyde.php
1'footer' => 'false',

Navigation Menu & Sidebar#

One of my favourite features with Hyde is its automatic navigation menu and documentation sidebar generator.

How it works:#

The sidebar works by creating a list of all the documentation pages.

The navigation menu is a bit more sophisticated, it adds all the top-level Blade and Markdown pages. It also adds an automatic link to the docs if there is an index.md in the _docs directory.

Reordering Sidebar Items#

Sadly, Hyde is not intelligent enough to determine what order items should be in (blame Dr Jekyll for this), so you will probably want to set a custom order.

Reordering items in the documentation sidebar is as easy as can be. In the docs config, there is an array just for this. If a page identifier is found here it will get priority calculated according to its position in the list, plus an offset of 500. This offset allows you to pages earlier in the list using front matter.

If a page does not exist in the list they get priority 999, which puts them last. You can also use front matter to set a priority for a page. The front matter value will always take precedence.

Let's see an example:

Filepath: config/docs.php
1// These are the default values in the config. It puts the readme.md first in order.
2'sidebar_order' => [
3    'readme', // This is the first entry, so it gets the priority 500 + 0
4    'installation', // This gets priority 500 + 1
5    'getting-started', // And this gets priority 500 + 2
6    // Any other pages not listed will get priority 999
7]

Reordering Navigation Menu Items#

As Hyde makes an effort to organize the menu items in a sensible way, your project comes preconfigured to put what it thinks are your most important pages first. This may of course not always match what you want, so thankfully it's easy to reorder the menu items!

Simply update the navigation.order array in the Hyde config! The priorities set will determine the order of the menu items. Lower values are higher in the menu, and any pages not listed will get priority 999, which puts them last.

Filepath: config/hyde.php
1'navigation' => [
2    'order' => [
3        'index' => 0, // _pages/index.md (or .blade.php)
4        'posts' => 10, // _pages/posts.md (or .blade.php)
5        'docs/index' => 100, // _docs/index.md
6    ]
7]

You can also set the priority of a page directly in the front matter. This will override any dynamically inferred or config defined priority. While this is useful for one-offs, it can make it harder to reorder items later on. It's up to you which method you prefer to use. This setting can be used both for the navigation menu and the sidebar.

1---
2navigation:
3    priority: 10
4---

Tip: If you are using automatic subdirectory dropdowns, you can also set their priority in the config. Just use the directory name instead of the page identifier.

Adding Custom Navigation Menu Links#

You can easily add custom navigation menu links similar how we add Authors. Simply add a NavItem model to the navigation.custom array.

When linking to an external site, you should use the NavItem::forLink() method facade. The first two arguments are the destination and label, both required. Third argument is the priority, which is optional, and defaults to 500.

Filepath: config/hyde.php
1use Hyde\Framework\Features\Navigation\NavItem;
2 
3'navigation' => [
4    'custom' => [
5        NavItem::forLink('https://github.com/hydephp/hyde', 'GitHub', 200),
6    ]
7]

Simplified, this will then be rendered as follows:

1<a href="https://github.com/hydephp/hyde">GitHub</a>

Excluding Items (Blacklist)#

Sometimes, especially if you have a lot of pages, you may want to prevent links from showing up in the main navigation menu. To remove items from being automatically added, simply add the page's route key to the blacklist. As you can see, the 404 page has already been filled in for you.

1'navigation' => [
2    'exclude' => [
3        '404'
4    ]
5]

You can also specify that a page should be excluded by setting the page front matter.

1---
2navigation:
3    hidden: true
4---

Changing the menu item labels#

Hyde makes a few attempts to find a suitable label for the navigation menu items to automatically create helpful titles. You can override the label using the navigation.label front matter property.

From the Hyde config you can also override the label of navigation links using the by mapping the route key to the desired title. Note that the front matter property will take precedence over the config property.

Filepath: config/hyde.php
1'navigation' => [
2    'labels' => [
3        'index' => 'Start',
4        'docs/index' => 'Documentation',
5    ]
6]

Blade Views#

Hyde uses the Laravel Blade templating engine. Most parts of the included templates have been extracted into components to be customized easily. Before editing the views you should familiarize yourself with the Laravel Blade Documentation.

To edit a default Hyde component you need to publish them first using the hyde publish:views command.

1php hyde publish:views

The files will then be available in the resources/views/vendor/hyde directory.

Frontend Styles#

Hyde is designed to not only serve as a framework but a whole starter kit and comes with a Tailwind starter template for you to get up and running quickly. If you want to customize these, you are free to do so. Please see the Managing Assets page to learn more.

Markdown Configuration#

Hyde uses League CommonMark for converting Markdown into HTML, and uses the GitHub Flavored Markdown extension. The Markdown related settings are found in the config/markdown.php file. Below follows an overview of the Markdown configuration options available in Hyde.

CommonMark Extensions#

You can add any extra CommonMark Extensions, or change the default ones, using the extensions array in the config file. They will then automatically be loaded into the CommonMark converter environment when being set up by Hyde.

Filepath: config/markdown.php
1'extensions' => [
2    \League\CommonMark\Extension\GithubFlavoredMarkdownExtension::class,
3    \League\CommonMark\Extension\Attributes\AttributesExtension::class,
4],

Remember that you may need to install any third party extensions through Composer before you can use them.

CommonMark Configuration#

In the same file you can also change the configuration values to be passed to the CommonMark converter environment. Hyde handles many of the options automatically, but you may want to override some of them and/or add your own.

Filepath: config/markdown.php
1'config' => [
2    'disallowed_raw_html' => [
3        'disallowed_tags' => [],
4    ],
5],

See the CommonMark Configuration Docs for the available options. Any custom options will be merged with the defaults.

Allow Raw HTML#

Since Hyde uses GitHub Flavored Markdown, some HTML tags are stripped out by default. If you want to allow all arbitrary HTML tags, and understand the risks involved, you can use the allow_html setting to enable all HTML tags.

Filepath: config/markdown.php
1'allow_html' => true,

Allow Blade Code#

HydePHP also allows you to use Blade code in your Markdown files. This is disabled by default, since it allows arbitrary PHP code specified in Markdown to be executed. It's easy to enable however, using the enable_blade setting.

Filepath: config/markdown.php
1'enable_blade' => true,

See the Blade in Markdown documentation for more information on how to use this feature.

YAML Configuration#

The settings in the config/hyde.php file can also be set by using a hyde.yml file in the root of your project directory.

Note that YAML settings cannot call any PHP functions, so you can't access helpers like env() for environment variables, nor declare authors or navigation links, as you cannot use facades and objects. But that doesn't stop you from using both files if you want to. Just keep in mind that any duplicate settings in the YAML file override any made in the PHP file.

Here is an example showing some of the config/hyde.php file settings, and how they would be set in the YAML file.

Filepath: hyde.yml
 1name: HydePHP
 2url: "http://localhost"
 3pretty_urls: false
 4generate_sitemap: true
 5rss:
 6  enabled: true
 7  filename: feed.xml
 8  description: HydePHP RSS Feed
 9language: en
10output_directory: _site

Namespaced YAML Configuration#

If you are running v1.2 or higher, you can also use namespaced configuration options in the YAML file.

This allows you to set the settings of any configuration file normally found in the config directory.

This feature is automatically enabled when you have a hyde: entry first in your hyde.yml file

Filepath: hyde.yml
1hyde:
2  name: HydePHP
3 
4docs:
5  sidebar:
6    header: "My Docs"

This would set the name setting in the config/hyde.php file, and the sidebar.header setting in the config/docs.php file.

Each top level key in the YAML file is treated as a namespace, and the settings are set in the corresponding configuration file. You can of course use arrays like normal even in namespaced configuration.