About timelinejs-template
timelinejs-template is basic Jekyll template for creating self-hosted TimelineJS on GitHub Pages. It is compatible with existing timelines created in Google Sheets following the TimelineJS template or can be used with TimelineJS formatted JSON files.
Note: since the template implements self hosted TimelineJS3, please explore TimelineJS for more examples, data format documentation, and advanced features.
Why timelinejs-template?
TimelineJS is a very popular open-source project to create visual timelines that can be embedded on a webpage. Their “authoring tool” provides an easy way to create and publish a timeline embed using Google Sheets. This is great for getting started with minimal setup and no overhead.
However, relying on Google Sheets can be problematic:
- API outages and changes unexpectedly break the TimelineJS service
- you may not have a convenient location to host your media files or a website to embed your timelines
- Google platform exposes your users to unnecessary privacy tradeoffs
To avoid these issues you can self-host your TimelineJS projects and use the standalone javascript to create timelines without relying on any 3rd party services.
The timelinejs-template implements the basics of TimelineJS in a simple Jekyll project template to make self-hosting easy on GitHub Pages.
This approach is more sustainable, keeping the library assets, metadata, and media together in a self-contained package (rather than multiple 3rd party platforms).