Blackndsky.net

Windows - Linux - Powershell

Jekyll on GitHub Pages

Inspired by a friend of mine, I wanted to create a site for my own personal use that met the following needs:

Not require me to maintain any kind of public facing server or infrastructure
Be fast and efficient
Easy to maintain
Most importantly, be free of cost (except for a domain name, which is optional)

Github Pages

Perhaps the easiest part of all of this was creating a site out of a repo on Github. It’s as simple as: create a repo, go to settings, Github Pages, select a branch and save. That’s it, the repo will be accessible at: $user.github.io/repo

Furthermore, if you add a custom domain and update it’s DNS accordingly, you can have a genuine website with even an SSL

Setting up DNS was really easy. Github has a help article going into more detail
https://help.github.com/en/articles/setting-up-an-apex-domain#configuring-a-records-with-your-dns-provider

Update the A records for your domain to:
- 185.199.108.153
- 185.199.109.153
- 185.199.110.153
- 185.199.111.153
Set www as a C-NAME for the non-www domain

Jekyll on Debian

I decided to go with Jekyll since Github Pages supports rendering it natively, without the need to only publish the output directory that is common with many other static site generators.

Install Ruby

sudo apt install git ruby-full build-essential zlib1g-dev

Configure Ruby

echo '# Install Ruby Gems to ~/gems' >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'export GEM_HOME="$HOME/gems"' >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/gems/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

Install Ruby Gems

gem install jekyll bundler

Clone existing repo

cd ~/
git clone https://github.com/$User/$Repo.git $Site

Create a new site

cd ~/
jekyll new <SiteName> --force
cd <SiteName>

Check for updates

bundle install
bundle update

Start Jekyll server

bundle exec jekyll serve --watch --force_polling --host=<IP>

Load Jekyll site
http://127.0.0.1:4000

Working with Jekyll

It takes a little bit, but working with Jekyll is very easy.
I’ve found these resources helpful in getting to understand Jekyll.
https://jekyllrb.com/docs/
https://jekyllrb.com/docs/variables/
https://idratherbewriting.com/documentation-theme-jekyll/mydoc_conditional_logic.html