Jekyll is a web-framework written in Ruby for creating static pages. If you're unfamiliar with the term, static means that it can take a set of input files and turn it into a site that's linked up very nicely, but cannot provide any interaction with the user, nor can it react to it's environment by using a web-server. Interactivity is still available on the client-side through the use of javascript of course.
Jekyll is very good at things like making informational sites, or even simple blogs. It will parse markdown and load it into templates for you, which makes it quick and easy to write content for your site. If creating a blog is something that interests you, also check out Octopress, which is a blog framework built on top of Jekyll.
If you've always wanted your own blog, or even just want to get started learning out to create a website, now is a good a time as any. Jekyll and Octopress integrate perfectly with Github Pages, which allow you to host static sites completely free!
TLDR:
- Jekyll is a quick and easy static site framework.
- Host a blog for free on Github Pages.
If you want to check out the source it's available on the Jekyll Github page.
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Hopefully you learned something 🤞! If you did, please consider checking out my book: It teaches the principles of using optics in Haskell and other functional programming languages and takes you all the way from an beginner to wizard in all types of optics! You can get it here. Every sale helps me justify more time writing blog posts like this one and helps me to continue writing educational functional programming content. Cheers!