diff --git a/_config.yaml b/_config.yaml
index d390cc9..798e121 100644
--- a/_config.yaml
+++ b/_config.yaml
@@ -1,49 +1,83 @@
 # title of this site
 # TODO:
-title: LONG FORM BLOG
+title: _config.yaml title goes here
 
 # subtitle
 # TODO: 
-subtitle: Sample Subtitle
+subtitle: _config.yaml subtitle goes here
 
+# label for the home menu
 nav:
   home: Home
+  hide_home: true
+
+index:
+  # if omitted a default title will be generated
+  # which reads "X blogs since YYYY"
+  title: "Jekyll Theme: «Isabeline»"
+  
+  # if configured this subtitle will render between intro and 
+  # page index
+  subtitle: Blog
+
+  # this html copy will be placed at the top of the index page
+  intro: >-
+    <h2>About</h2>
+    <p>Isabeline is a clean mobile-friendly jekyll theme for
+    long form content.</p>
+    <p>Here's a partial list of features: Timeline, tag cloud, 
+    customizable global menu, QED, color theming, image include, code snippets.</p>
+
+  # this html copy will be placed at the bottom of the index page
+  outro: >-
+    <h2>For more information</h2>
+    <p>Full souce code for the theme is <a href="https://git.rzen.dev/rzen/jekyll-theme-isabelline">available</a>.</p>
+
+
+
+# # home page
+# home: /about/
 
 # site description
 # TODO:
-description: Sample description
+description: _config.yaml description goes here
 
 # used on the home page's title tag
 # TODO:
-tagline: Sample tagline
+tagline: _config.yaml tagline goes here
 
 # if specified url to this website will be computed as
 # https://blog.example.com/valueofbaseurl/
-# TODO:
-baseurl: ""
+# NOTE: leading forward slash is mandatory
+baseurl: "/baseurl"
 url: "https://blog.example.com"
 
 # used in footer
 # TODO
 copyright_owner:
-  full_name: Your Name
-  short_name: your_short_name
-  email: youremail@example.com
+  full_name: _config.yaml copyright_owner.full_name
+  short_name: _config.yaml copyright_owner.short_name
+  email: _config.yaml copyright_owner.email
 
 # default author's name
 # used in posts, pages and blogs
 # TODO
 author:
-  short_name: your_short_name
-  full_name: Your Full Name
-  email: youremail at example dot com
+  full_name: _config.yaml author.full_name
+  short_name: _config.yaml author.short_name
+  email: _config.yaml author.email
 
 # used in footer of every post, page and blog
 # TODO: optional
 license:
   name: MIT
+
+  # if url isnt provided, a link to a local page will be used
   url: https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT
 
+  # link for a local legalese page
+  local_url: /legal/
+
 # timezone
 tz: America/New York
 
@@ -126,6 +160,8 @@ kramdown:
 # semantically superfluous whitespace
 jekyll_tidy:
   compress_html: true
+  # NOTE: must be true for syntax highlighting to work
+  # this known problem will be addressed in a future update
 
 # sass
 sass: