Inspired by certain people (thanks Mel!) and convinced it couldn’t be that difficult, I dedicated the past weekend to setting up a blog on GutHub using Jekyll. Turns out it could be that difficult, but by some combination of multiple online tutorials and brute force, I finally got it working!
What could possible go wrong?
Jekyll provides some amazing features, which became evident when I stopped fighting with it. I’ve been building website in CMS platforms for nine years, so it seemed odd not having a database to throw things into and extract thru templates/themes. To my surprise, much of the syntax in Jekyll templates echoes the typical development workflow in CMS templates. Basically, it’s all variables inserted into structure (either html or Markdown, your pick), and a config file for site-wide values. The theming system involved a folder of layouts for different types of pages, and there’s an includes folder containing code bits like the nav, header, and footer which can be used to include the same code bits in the layout files.
Posts are contained in the posts folder, wow. The posts use a naming convention that begins with a date (YYYY-MM-DD) and then whatever name you wish. The post itself can be either html or Markdown with the appropriate extension, and Jekyll recognizes either. You write a post, then your tell Jekyll to build your site by running jekyll build. Jekyll will then build your site with the new post in a _site folder. Tell jekyll to serve your site with jekyll serve and you can preview your site on http://localhost:4000. Then you can upload it to your web server, GitHub, or wherever.
More text coming soon
After getting through the technical barriers, it’s time to write.