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Article version: Enterprise Server 2.18

Setting a Markdown processor for your GitHub Pages site using Jekyll

You can choose a Markdown processor to determine how Markdown is rendered on your GitHub Pages site.

GitHub Pages is available in public repositories with GitHub Free and GitHub Free for organizations, and in public and private repositories with GitHub Pro, GitHub Team, GitHub Enterprise Cloud, and GitHub Enterprise Server.

People with write permissions for a repository can set the Markdown processor for a GitHub Pages site.

GitHub Pages supports two Markdown processors: kramdown and GitHub's own extended CommonMark processer, which is used to render GitHub Flavored Markdown throughout GitHub Enterprise. For more information, see "About writing and formatting on GitHub."

You can use GitHub Flavored Markdown with either processor, but only our CommonMark processor will always match the results you see on GitHub Enterprise.

  1. On GitHub Enterprise, navigate to your site's repository.

  2. In your repository, browse to the _config.yml file.

  3. In the upper right corner of the file view, click to open the file editor.

    Edit file button

  4. Find the line that starts with markdown: and change the value to kramdown or GFM.

    Markdown setting in config.yml

  5. At the bottom of the page, type a short, meaningful commit message that describes the change you made to the file. You can attribute the commit to more than one author in the commit message. For more information, see "Creating a commit with multiple co-authors."

    Commit message for your change

  6. Below the commit message fields, decide whether to add your commit to the current branch or to a new branch. If your current branch is the default branch, you should choose to create a new branch for your commit and then create a pull request. For more information, see "Creating a new pull request."

    Commit branch options

  7. Click Propose new file.

    Propose new file button

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