This week, I was trying to work on my personal site. I started this months and months ago, and created most of the site with pure HTML and CSS with the addition of some Bootstrap features. After speaking with some classmates, I decided that I should be using a static site generator. Enter Jekyll - which is the most popular static site generator for years running.
There are plenty of blogs about why you should use a static site generator, so I’ll just quickly list a few reasons:
- With no databases, a static site is easier to maintain and more secure than a site using a CMS
- You can build templates and write content in markdown, textile, liquid, or even just plain HTML/CSS
- You can host it free on Github pages (easy since my blog is already there!)
- Jekyll uses Ruby, which I already know well
One problem….I can’t get it to work! I read a few blogs about the setup and followed along. Seemed simple enough. I was able to get my HTML information to show up, but there was no CSS. I read some more blogs, I added the Bootstrap Sass files, I changed the file structure around a few times, but nothing worked. I read some more blogs, changed some layout and head information, and now nothing shows up.
So that’s fun. I hope I can get it working tomorrow or Tuesday so I can write another blog about how to do it. Until then - this is me…
