If you don’t mind getting your hands on “HTML-like” type of code and looking around for a way to launch a simple blog website paired with free hosting, then Jekyll should definitely be on your evaluation list. It’s open-source, text based and follows baking CMS principle by generating a static site from pre-written markup files. Pair it with free hosting from GitHub Pages, comments from Disqus and you have yourself a very flexible blogging platform without required dependencies on a database and third party module/plugins.
Jekyll 2 was recently released and can be installed on Ubuntu 14.04 or 14.10 using apt-get and gem install. Additional features such as Rdiscount can be added with the same method. Although there are packages for Jekyll in the Ubuntu repository, the packages are for older versions of Jekyll.
Jekyll is a static site generator with a templating system that can be adapted for many types of websites, including blogs. It can be run on a server, or run locally and the generated files uploaded to a server. It is the default software used by Github Pages.
Tested with Jekyll 2.5.2 on Ubuntu 14.04 and 14.10
But before you install you must install you have Ruby 2.0.0, donot use apt-get install ruby follow the procedure given below
Install ruby, the ruby development libraries, and the make command.
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:brightbox/ruby-ng-experimental &&
sudo apt-get update &&
sudo apt-get install -y ruby2.0 ruby2.0-dev ruby2.0-doc
sudo apt-get install make gcc nodejs
Installation of nodejs is required because of an issue where Jekyll requires a JavaScript runtime even if it will not be used.
Install the Jekyll gem system wide. For speed, we are excluding the extended documentation. To include all documentation, omit the --no-rdoc --no-ri switches.
sudo gem install jekyll --no-rdoc --no-ri
Check that Jekyll has been successfully installed.
jekyll -v
The current version is jekyll 3.0.1.
Additional gems can add features to Jekyll, such the github-pages gem which bundles together several gems supported by Github Pages.
sudo gem install github-pages --no-rdoc --no-ri
Although not required, git is often used to manage the files of a Jekyll website.
sudo apt-get install git
Now that Jekyll is installed, we need content for it to serve. We can either use a current website, or set up a new site from scratch.
Use git to clone an existing Jekyll website, such as this one!
git clone https://github.com/neerajvashistha/neerajvashistha.github.io.git
cd neerajvashistha.github.io
Please note: the --config option must be specified to run neerajvashistha.github.io locally. See Extra Options section below.
For a new Jekyll site, use the new command to create a directory structure and config files.
jekyll new my-awesome-site
cd my-awesome-site
Now that the basic config and layout are available, start Jekyll to generate the website HTML and start a local server.
jekyll serve
Then visit http://localhost:4000 in a web browser.
Jekyll is now successfully runnning!
Jekyll can watch the directory for changes and regenerate the website when files are modified.
jekyll serve -w
The default port 4000 can be changed, for example when running multiple Jekyll instances.
jekyll serve --port 4001
Then visit http://localhost:4001 in a web browser.
The _config.yml can also be specified. This is useful if you need different configs for a public site or when running locally. For example, when running michaelchelen.net locally use:
jekyll serve --config _config-local.yml
The website can also be generated without starting a local server. The files are placed into the _site directory and can be uploaded to a web server.
jekyll build
Jekyll can be updated similar to installation, by using the gem update command.
sudo gem update jekyll --no-rdoc --no-ri
The same command can be used to update additional gems.
sudo gem update github-pages --no-rdoc --no-ri