December 23, 2025
Using Jekyll’s Data Files to list concerts
On my /concerts page, I list every concert I’ve been to. Instead of manually updating that page, I store all the show details in a single data file by making use of Jekyll’s Data Files feature.
Everything lives in _data/concerts.json, with each entry containing the artist, date, venue, city, setlist URL (and. when relevant, a festival name). The page template pulls directly from that file using site.data.concerts and renders the list from there.
When the page builds, the template sorts the shows by date, groups them by year, and generates jump links for quick navigation between years. If a festival field is present, the festival name is shown instead of the venue automatically.
This setup is intentionally low-maintenance. I update one JSON file, rebuild the site, and the concerts page is regenerated automatically, with no extra tooling or hand-editing required.