Awesome Features in Jenkins which makes it interesting for beginners — Part 1

Now, your team wants a automated solution for Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment. You find Jenkins is one of the most popular tool and start with it.

Eventually you find Jenkins boring with the same interface and user experience. Follow these tips to make your Jenkins interesting!!

Lets start with UI

1. BlueOcean Plugin

In Jenkins, whenever we need to add some features, we do it by installing plugins. These plugins are available in Manage Jenkins > Manage Plugins > Available section.

Search for Blue Ocean > Select Blue Ocean and checkbox it. Then click on “Install without restart”

Wait for it to install Blue Ocean with its dependencies.

Now you have “Open Blue Ocean” option. Click on it. Now you have a whole new different UI and you notice it is a Single Page Application built with React. Selecting the pipeline gives you the builds run.

Advantage over Jenkins UI is

1. It gives different UI and UX.
2. It provides better representation of pipeline stages. Consider the pipeline has stages to be skipped for certain builds. This provides the better representation which is the process which is undergone in that specific build.

2. Adding CSS for the UI

Now, for some reason you still want to use Jenkins without Blue Ocean. You can use it better UI by tweaking some CSS.

We can add CSS to the already existing traditional Jenkins UI with a plugin called Simple Theme.

Lets install it from Manage Jenkins > Manage Plugins > Search for Simple Theme > Install without restart

Then Manage Jenkins > Configure System > Go to “Themes” section > Click on Add Button

Search for Jenkins Themes in Google to find the CSS themes > Select the one based on your taste > Add the URL

I personally prefer Neo2 Theme.

I have the link which has the css file. Apply & Save..

_We are done with some UI tweaks! Will go through other tweaks in the second part.

Thats it for the first part!

Will be continuing with some tweaks which we can do Jenkins in the next Part.

Stay tuned!

Any inputs in the blogposts are welcome

Thanks

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