Working with Data Files

February 8, 2026

One of the things I really like about my Jekyll site, was that I could work with data files to loop through data an spit out structured content. On my personal site, this was useful for things like my blogroll and my Projects page.

I wanted to have the same feature with Pure Blog, so I built it.

What is a data file?

It is just a small YAML file that holds a list of items. For example:

- name: "Pure Blog"
  url: "https://pureblog.org"
  comment: "A lightweight, flat-file blogging platform."

You can store these in a /data folder in the root of your Pure Blog install, e.g:

• data/blogroll.yml
• data/projects.yml

How do you use it in a page?

In your page content you can include a loop, like this:

{% for site in site.data.blogroll %}
<div class="card">
  <h2>{{ site.name }}</h2>
  <p>{{ site.comment }}</p>
  <a class="button" href="{{ site.url }}">Visit</a>
</div>
{% endfor %}

Pure Blog will replace that loop with your actual items at render time. I use this for my blogroll and projects page and it keeps things tidy.

Limitations

This is intentionally simple. It is great for basic lists, not complex templates. If you need more power, you will likely want a proper CMS or a full static site generator.

That said, for the small web and personal sites, this gets the job done.

docs