About Jekyll
Jekyll is a powerful program written in Ruby that allows you to create dynamic websites and blogs using just HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Technically, it is called a Static Site Generator (SSG), which means it generates static HTML pages from text files.
Jekyll is the most used SSG in the world, and for good reason:
- Easy to use: Jekyll uses a simple and intuitive syntax that makes it easy to create websites, even for those with no programming experience. Fast and efficient: Websites on Jekyll are fast and lightweight, providing a great user experience.
- Flexible: Jekyll offers a wide variety of plugins and themes to customize your website.
- Free and open source: Jekyll is a free and open source tool, which means you can use and modify it freely.
How does Jekyll work?
Jekyll websites are written using three programming technologies:
- Liquid Templating Language: A powerful templating language that allows you to create dynamic HTML pages.
- YAML: A data serialization language that makes it easy to set up your website.
- Markdown: A lightweight markup language that makes content writing easier. Jekyll automatically compiles these files to form static HTML pages. This means your website doesn’t need a database server, making it fast, secure and easy to manage.
With Jekyll you can:
- Build a complete website from a variety of available layouts.
- Use Markdown to write your content in a simple and organized way.
- Insert dynamic content into the website with the Liquid modeling language.
Jekyll is ideal for:
- Create personal websites or blogs.
- Online portfolios.
- Documentation sites.
- Marketing websites.
Advantages of using Jekyll:
- Easy to use: Jekyll is an intuitive tool that does not require advanced programming knowledge.
- Fast and efficient: Static websites generated by Jekyll are fast and lightweight, providing a great user experience.
- Flexible: Jekyll offers a wide variety of plugins and themes to customize your website.
- Free and open source: Jekyll is a free and open source tool, which means you can use and modify it freely.
Disadvantages
Jekyll is an ideal tool for creating simple static websites, but it may not be suitable for more complex projects that require advanced functionality, such as login systems or shopping carts. It does not have a content management system (CMS) like WordPress, requiring the user to manually manage the website’s content. Additionally, Jekyll does not provide its own hosting and relies on hosting services that support static websites, such as GitHub Pages or Netlify. Errors in Markdown or Liquid syntax can prevent the site from compiling, and there are no built-in SEO features, requiring the user to implement optimization techniques manually.
Conclusion
In summary, Jekyll offers a number of advantages, including ease of use, efficiency in generating static sites, flexibility for customization, and being free and open source. However, its suitability for more complex projects is limited, due to the lack of advanced functionality such as login systems or integrated CMS. Additionally, the need to manually manage website content, find external hosting, and deal with potential syntax errors can pose challenges for some users. Despite this, for simple projects and those who value the simplicity and performance of static websites, Jekyll remains an attractive option.
To get a better understanding
| Source | Link |
|---|---|
| Markdown |  |
| Jekyll |  |
| Liquid Templating Language |  |
| YAML |  |
| Github |  |
