Blogger DogBlogger Dog

Automated SEO Blog Posts for Jekyll and GitHub Pages

Jekyll only builds files in _posts that follow the YYYY-MM-DD-slug.md naming rule; a plain slug.md is silently ignored. Blogger Dog has a dedicated Jekyll writer that always uses the date-prefixed name.

What Blogger Dog writes

_posts/YYYY-MM-DD-slug.md with YAML front matter (title, date, description, tags, slug).

Detected from
  • _config.yml / _config.yaml
  • an existing _posts/ folder
Typical destination
  • _posts

_posts/2026-10-15-cut-build-time-in-half.md

---
title: "How We Cut Our Build Time in Half"
date: "2026-10-15"
description: "A step-by-step look at caching, parallel jobs and what didn't work."
tags: ["performance", "ci"]
slug: "cut-build-time-in-half"
---

## Why builds got slow
...

How publishing works

  1. 01

    Connect the repo

    Sign in with GitHub or GitLab (OAuth) and choose the branch GitHub Pages (or your CI) builds from.

  2. 02

    Posts land in _posts

    Onboarding detects Jekyll from _config.yml or _posts and uses _posts as the destination. Your theme's post layout renders them; no templates are added.

  3. 03

    Prove it is live

    Before the first scheduled post, Blogger Dog commits a temporary test post, waits for your host to rebuild, and checks that the public URL actually serves it. It then deletes the test post. Scheduled posts are checked the same way after every commit, so a post that was committed but never appeared is reported instead of silently counted as published.

Good to know

  • GitHub Pages rebuilds on every push to the publishing branch, so a post is usually live a minute or two after the commit.

Jekyll questions

Why are Jekyll posts named with a date prefix?
Jekyll only builds files in _posts named YYYY-MM-DD-slug.md and silently ignores anything else. Blogger Dog's Jekyll writer always uses that name, so a post is never committed but invisible.
Do posts get my post layout?
The front matter has title, date, description, tags and slug but no layout field. If your posts do not pick up the post layout automatically, add a defaults entry for the _posts path with layout: post in _config.yml.
How long until a post is live on GitHub Pages?
GitHub Pages rebuilds on each push to the publishing branch, usually within a minute or two. Blogger Dog checks the public URL after the commit and only counts the post once it is live.

Further reading

Try it on your Jekyll blog

Your first 3 posts are free. After that, plans start at $19/month for 10 posts.

Launch offer: 50% off any plan for 3 months with code EARLY3. First 3 customers, ends Sunday.

Claim 50% off
Start freeSee pricing