I decided not to do this because I just got my site looking right and they changed everything and I’m not changing it back just for a preview of something I’m not even planning on using So it might not be accurate. This is pure, unfollowed suggestion. There’s some more information here.

📦 jekyll-remote-theme – What It Is and How to Use It

jekyll-remote-theme is a GitHub Pages–approved plugin that allows you to use any public GitHub-hosted Jekyll theme without cloning or copying its files directly into your repo.

✅ How It Works

Instead of installing a theme via RubyGems, you just add this line to your _config.yml:

remote_theme: user/repo

This tells GitHub Pages to pull the theme from the given GitHub repo on build. The theme must be public and must follow standard Jekyll theme structure.

🧰 Example

To use Minima 3.0 via remote theme:

remote_theme: jekyll/minima

Then remove or ignore:

  • Any manually copied _layouts, _includes, _sass/minima, or assets/main.scss
  • Custom overrides should go after the remote theme is applied

I’m going to try and save my header.html, but if I can’t fuck minima 3.0 I just spent a couple hours getting it to look right and I’m not re-doing it the day after. I did ` mv main.scss _main.scss` because you have to because they changed everything about how CSS works for whatever reason. There’s other ways of doing it but I’m gonna try this.

⚠️ Important Notes

Feature Supported?
Public GitHub themes ✅ Yes
Private repos ❌ No
Custom themes (not on GitHub) ❌ No
Local theme override ⚠️ Only via file-path matching
_sass, _layouts, etc. ✅ You can override individual files in your repo
_config.yml merges ✅ Remote theme config is merged with yours

🧪 Your Plan vs. Remote Theme

“I was going to manually copy the SCSS and layout files from Minima 3.0 into my repo and include them in main.scss…”

That will work, and it’s how you “upgrade” to Minima 3.0 by force, but:

Pros of manual upgrade

  • Full control over every file
  • No surprises from remote updates

Cons

  • More complex maintenance
  • You’ll miss upstream changes unless you re-copy

✅ Easier Alternative: jekyll-remote-theme

  • Use remote_theme: jekyll/minima
  • Drop in only the files you want to override
  • GitHub will always pull the latest compatible version

🔚 TL;DR

If you want to “upgrade” to Minima 3.0:

  • You can copy the raw files into your repo and rewrite main.scss
  • OR just use jekyll-remote-theme and override only what you need

For most users:
remote_theme: is easier, cleaner, and fully GitHub Pages–compliant.