GitHub pages does not support plugins, but plugins are clearly very useful (e.g. jekyll-scholar).
Nitrous.io supports adding plugins to your GH pages site, but this seems a little involved. Is there any simply way to get plugins working on my github site, or should I just make _site/ the root, as the jekyll-scholar dev. recommends?
The method described in the Nitrous.io blog post can actually be used with a local Ruby/Rails environment, which removes some of the complexity. There's an even more convenient Rakefile setup from David Ensinger that implements the deployment steps proposed by Randy Morris.
Essentially, these Rakefiles are just conveniences to batch the deployment of both your Jekyll source (with plugins) and compiled _site to GitHub Pages as the jekyll-scholar dev recommends. Since your site is a User Pages (username.github.io), then you'll want your compiled _site to end up in Master, and your Jekyll source with plugins in a separate Source branch. If you want to first experiment with a Project Page, then you'll want your _site to end up in the gh-pages branch (which can be accomplished with this Rakefile)
