What's Jekyll?

05 Oct 2020

Jekyll is a static site generator, an open-source tool for creating simple yet powerful websites of all shapes and sizes. From the project’s readme:

Jekyll is a simple, blog aware, static site generator. It takes a template directory […] and spits out a complete, static website suitable for serving with Apache or your favorite web server. This is also the engine behind GitHub Pages, which you can use to host your project’s page or blog right here from GitHub.

It’s an immensely useful tool.

Jekyll does what you tell it to do — no more, no less. It doesn’t try to outsmart users by making bold assumptions, nor does it burden them with needless complexity and configuration. Put simply, Jekyll gets out of your way and allows you to concentrate on what truly matters: your content.

See: philosophy

Getting Started

• Install the gem
• Read up about its Usage and Configuration
• Take a gander at some existing Sites
• Fork and Contribute your own modifications
• Have questions? Check out our official forum community Jekyll Talk or #jekyll on irc.freenode.net

Diving In

• Migrate from your previous system
• Learn how Front Matter works
• Put information on your site with Variables
• Customize the Permalinks your posts are generated with
• Use the built-in Liquid Extensions to make your life easier
• Use custom Plugins to generate content specific to your site
• Watch video tutorials from Giraffe Academy

Need help?

If you don’t find the answer to your problem in our docs, or in the troubleshooting section, ask the community for help.

Find out more by visiting the project on GitHub.