You can use a variety of text editors when working with a Jekyll project. WebStorm from IntelliJ offers a lot of project-specific features, such as find and replace, that make it ideal for working with tech comm projects.

About text editors and WebStorm

There are a variety of text editors available, but I like WebStorm the best because it groups files into projects, which makes it easy to find all instances of a text string, to do find and replace operations across the project, and more.

If you decide to use WebStorm, here are a few tips on configuring the editor.

Remove unnecessary plugins

By default, WebStorm comes packaged with a lot more functionality than you probably need. You can lighten the editor by removing some of the plugins. Go to WebStorm > Preferences > Plugins and clear the check boxes of plugins you don’t need.

Set default tab indent to 3 spaces instead of 4

You can set the way the tab works, and whether it uses spaces or a tab character. For details, see Code Style. JavaScript in WebStorm’s help.

On a Mac, go to **WebStorm Preferences Editor Code Style Other File Types. Don’t select the “Use tab character” check box. Set **3 for the Tab size and Indent check boxes.
On Windows, go to **File Settings Editor Code Style Other File Types** to access the same menu.

Add the Markdown Support plugin

Since you’ll be writing in Markdown, having color coding and other support for Markdown is important. Install the Markdown Support plugin by going to WebStorm > Preferences > Plugins and clicking Install JetBrains Plugin. Search for Markdown Support. (I would avoid the Multimarkdown plugin — it seemed to make all my dashes in frontmatter tags extend half way across the page.)

Enable Soft Wraps (word wrapping)

Most likely you’ll want to enable soft wraps, which wraps lines rather than extending them out forever and requiring you to scroll horizontally to see the text. To enable softwrapping, go to WebStorm > Preferences > Editor > General and see the Soft Wraps section. Select the Use soft wraps in editor check box.

Exclude a directory

When you’re searching for content, you don’t want to edit any file that appears in the _site directory. You can exclude a directory from Webstorm by right-clicking the directory and choosing Mark Directory As and then selecting Excluded.

Set tabs to 3 spaces

You can set the default number of spaces a tab sets, including whether Webstorm uses a tab character or spaces. You want spaces, and you want to set this to default number of spaces to 3 spaces instead of 4. Note that this is due to the way Kramdown handles the continuation of lists.

When you intercept a list with a paragraph or code sample, the indentation of the intercepting paragraph or list must align with the beginning of the first character after the space in the list item numbering. This is typically 3 spaces, not 4. Note that this style differs from the Github-flavored Markdown style. (Welcome to the world of subtle and infuriating discrepancies between Markdown flavors.)

To set the indentation, see the “Tabs and Indents” topic in this Code Style. Javascript topic in Webstorm’s help.

Shortcuts

It can help to learn a few key shortcuts:

Command Shortcuts
Shift + Shift Allows you to find a file by searching for its name.
Shift + Command + F Find in whole project. (WebStorm uses the term “Find in path”.)
Shift + Command + R Replace in whole project. (Again, WebStorm calls it “Replace in path.”)
Command + F Find on page
Shift + R Replace on page
Right-click > Add to Favorites Allows you to add files to a Favorites section, which expands below the list of files in the project pane.
Shift + tab Applies outdenting (opposite of tabbing)
Shift + Function + F6 Rename a file
Command + Delete Delete a file
Command + 2 Show Favorites pane
Shift + Option + F Add to Favorites

Finding files

When I want to find a file, I browse to the file in the preview site and copy the page name in the URL. Then in Webstorm I press Shift twice and paste in the file name. The search feature automatically highlights the file I want, and I press Enter.

Identifying changed files

When you have the Git and Github integration, changed files appear in blue. This lets you know what needs to be committed to your repository.

Creating file templates

Rather than insert the frontmatter by hand each time, it’s much faster to simply create a Jekyll template. To create a Jekyll template in WebStorm:

  1. Right-click a file in the list of project files, and select New > Edit File Templates.

    If you don’t see the Edit File Templates option, you may need to create a file template first. Go to File > Default Settings > Editor > File and Code Templates. Create a new file template with an md extension, and then close and restart WebStorm. Then repeat this step and you will see the File Templates option appear in the right context menu.

  2. In the upper-left corner of the dialog box that appears, click the + button to create a new template.

  3. Name it something like Jekyll page. Insert the frontmatter you want, and save it.

    To use the Jekyll template, when you create a new file in your WebStorm project, you can select your Jekyll file template.

Disable pair quotes

By default, each time you type ', WebStorm will pair the quote (creating two quotes). You can disable this by going to WebStorm > Preferences > Editor > Smartkeys. Clear the Insert pair quotes check box.