This website has been run on various CMSs and frameworks over the years. Joomla, Drupal, Laravel, Symfony…and now Jekyll.
I’ve always liked using this blog as a way to learn new frameworks or CMSs. Not just to write about what I’m learning, but a project with a clearly defined purpose which I can use to focus what I’m learning into something practical. However, it started to feel a little over the top, having a server and database running a simple blog. Afterall, in between blog posts, the site is essentially static.
Jekyll
Jekyll is a static site generator. This just means that the whole site output is generated in one go, rather than dynamically. From a hosting perspective, this has some real advantages. It’s much cheaper to host, as you only need to host HTML and static assets (no php, node, databases, etc.). Naturally, this means things are a lot simpler and cheaper from a maintenance perspective too. My Symfony blog was only costing about £10 a month, but still, it’s not free. Jekyll, on the other hand, can be hosted for free using Github pages.
If you’re interested in finding out more, here’s more information about Jekyll and Github pages, and here is the source code for this website.