Jekyll is a lightweight way to build a small site or blog. It was originally built as software to create a blog and you’ll see echoes of that beginning as you work with it.

It’s not a CMS. There’s no GUI or WYSIWYG to use - you sort of have your “hands in the engine” so to speak.

You can do a lot with Jekyll however. There’s no underlying database or underlying architecture to maintain and update which can make it a lot easier to deal with on a day to day basis. It is completely open source - free, people have done a lot with it (including a lot of pretty things) - Just try seaching for Jekyll themes and you’ll be amazed at what you find.

More advantages of working with Jekyll include:

  • Since it’s static pages, it works as quickly as your internet connection
  • If you use a repository for your Jekyll site with Github or Bitbucket, you can have version control for all your files (including your content pages!)
  • You can work with it anywhere
  • You can use more complicated scripting if you choose

It also can be used with Github pages.

You can find out a lot more about Jekyll by looking at their main website. The site includes documentation, tutorials and more.

2. Installing Jekyll