I was looking for a simple blogging platform that provided for my following needs.

  • Decouple content and formatting and be able to store it on cheap / free hosts with minimal hassle (e.g. github pages).
  • Total control over my content and not to be tied in to a blog provider (like Blogspot or Wordpress).
  • To be able to edit my content easily, just like I would take notes for myself.
  • To move my blog to anywhere I want and be am able to change formatting the way I want.

Writing content in Markdown seemed like a good, simple idea. Easy to write, total control over content, no complex editors, no vendor lock-in. Here is a screenshot of my editing experience in Visual Studio Code:

Edit experience in Visual Studio Code

and simple publishing to github through a basic batch script:

Github Publish

As a bonus, Jekyll also offers powerful support for code snippets. Being a technical blog, this was just great.

def print_hi(name)
  puts "Hi, #{name}"
end
print_hi('Tom')
#=> prints 'Hi, Tom' to STDOUT.

Check out the Jekyll docs for more info on how to get the most out of Jekyll. File all bugs/feature requests at Jekyll’s GitHub repo. If you have questions, you can ask them on Jekyll Talk.