How to install jekyll

18 May 2011

This is my first blog post entry for progriff.com. Since this blog was made with Jekyll, I'll walk you through how to setup a basic blog with Jekyll. Why Jekyll? Here are a couple of points I could think of :

• It generates static pages for you.
• You do not need a database in your server
• You do not need a webserver (Apache, IIS, etc ...)
• Without all those mumbo jumbo on your server, your server will be more secure

Here's how:

1 . First, install Jekyll

    $ sudo gem install jekyll
    

2 . Then install rdiscount

    $ sudo gem install rdiscount
    

3 . Make a directory. Let's call it blog.

    $ mkdir blog
    $ cd blog
    

4 . Create the directory structure as of below.

      blog
        |-- _layouts
                `-- default.html
                `-- post.html
        |-- _posts
           `-- 2011-05-18-foo-bar.md
        |-- _site
        |-- css
        `-- index.html
        `-- _config.yml
    

5 . This is optional. If you need code syntax highlighting, you'll need Pygment.

    $ sudo easy_install Pygments
    $ pygmentize -S default -f html > /path/to/your/blog/css/pygment.css
    

6 . Take a look at the source for this blog and copy whatever you need.

7 . After you're done, you want to preview your blog. In your terminal, type

    $ jekyll --server --auto
    

8 . Go to your browser and go to "http://localhost:4000"

9 . If you need to compile the pages without starting the server, just type "jekyll"