Plugin not working unless the gem is added to the group :jekyll_plugins section

[lucius-asclepius]

Hi, I'm using the minimal-mistakes template and I don't know if it's something specific to that, but jekyll-target-blank didn't work by just adding it to the end of the Gemfile; instead, I had to add it to the group :jekyll_plugins section. I spent 30 minutes figuring this out so I thought it would be useful to open an issue so that it's noted.

# If you have any plugins, put them here!
group :jekyll_plugins do
  gem "jekyll-paginate"
  gem "jekyll-sitemap"
  gem "jekyll-gist"
  gem "jekyll-feed"
  gem "jemoji"
  gem "jekyll-include-cache"
  gem "jekyll-algolia"
  gem "jekyll-target-blank"
end

gem "commonmarker", "~> 0.23.4"
gem "racc", "~> 1.6"
gem "unf_ext", "~> 0.0.8"
gem "minimal-mistakes-jekyll"
gem "webrick", "~> 1.7"

Maybe README.md should write something like this?

Add the following to your site's Gemfile (into the group :jekyll_plugins section if you have one):

gem 'jekyll-target-blank'

[benfwalla]

I love you!

[itsmevictor]

I'm using the Academic Pages template which is a fork of the minimal-mistakes one, but it does not appear to be working for me.

I added this to my Gemfile:

# If you have any plugins, put them here!
group :jekyll_plugins do
  # gem "jekyll-archives"
  gem "jekyll-feed"
  gem 'jekyll-sitemap'
  gem 'hawkins'
  gem "webrick", "~> 1.8"
  gem "jekyll-target-blank"
end

and that to my _config.yml:

# Plugins
plugins:
  - jekyll-paginate
  - jekyll-sitemap
  - jekyll-gist
  - jekyll-feed
  - jekyll-redirect-from
  - jekyll-target-blank
# mimic GitHub Pages with --safe
whitelist:
  - jekyll-paginate
  - jekyll-sitemap
  - jekyll-gist
  - jekyll-feed
  - jemoji

but links still open on the same page. The weird thing is that when I test my website with bundle exec jekyll serve, the plugin works correctly, but not on the Github Pages that hosts my website.

Any help is appreciated!

[keithmifsud]

Hi @itsmevictor and @lucius-asclepius, We did try (several times now) to get the plugin approved by GitHub and added to the whitelist. Unfortunately, we never received a reply.

You'll need to build your site locally and deploy it afterwards.