Minitest Rails
Blog Guide

The open-source foundation for your next technical guide

Built on Bridgetown. Designed for developers who value structure, speed, and maintainable architecture. Before you write Chapter 1, lay the groundwork with Chapter Zero.

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Everything you need to start writing. Nothing you don't.

A deliberate starter for guides and long-form technical content. Green lights mean you're ready to go.

  • Built for technical authors

    Scaffolding designed for guides, multi-part tutorials, and documentation.

  • Ruby-powered speed

    Bridgetown handles static site generation so you get a fast build and a smooth developer workflow.

  • Zero-clutter architecture

    A clean base for your content. No heavy frameworks or bloated dependencies.

  • Ready to fork

    Fully open source under the MIT license. Fork the repository, update the configuration, and start writing.

Template Features

What's in the Box?

Don't start from scratch. Chapter Zero ships with the exact architecture used to power full-scale technical guides.

  • The Guide System

    Ordered Markdown chapters with a built-in left sidebar navigation, chapter indexes, and a seamless "next chapter" flow.

  • Data-Driven Landing Page

    A high-converting layout featuring a centered hero, audience cards, testimonials, and author bios, all driven simply by YAML data.

  • Automated Social Previews

    Dynamically generates 1200×630 OG image PNGs at build time for every chapter and post.

  • Built-in Marketing & Conversion

    Drop-in components for ConvertKit newsletter signups, contact forms, and support banners.

  • Integrated Blog

    A dated posts collection with index and post layouts for updates that don't fit into the main guide.

  • Deploy Anywhere

    Plain Bridgetown output with a Netlify config included. Deploy wherever static files work.

Quick Start

From zero to published

Three commands and you're previewing locally. Fork the template, run the setup, then make it yours.

  1. Step 1

    Clone the base

    Copy the template to your machine and step into the project directory.

    git clone https://github.com/minitestrails/chapter-zero.git my-new-guide
    cd my-new-guide
  2. Step 2

    Install dependencies

    Install Ruby and Node dependencies so Bridgetown can build the site.

    bundle install
    yarn install
  3. Step 3

    Start the engine

    Launch the dev server and preview your guide locally in the browser.

    bin/bridgetown start

Then customize your site

Edit src/_data/site_metadata.yml for your name and URLs. Add chapters under src/_guide/. Set your production URL in config/initializers.rb.

Want the detailed guide?

The steps above get you running locally. The full guide on GitHub covers configuration, content structure, deployment, and customization.

Read the full guide

Ready to lay the groundwork?

Grab the template, customize your config, and start writing Chapter 1 today. This site runs on Chapter Zero. Minitest Rails is one example of what you can build on top of it.

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