Installation

Installation steps are available at Jekyll’s quickstart page.

The Jekyll can be installed on most operating systems.

Installing via Bash on Windows 10

Install Linux Subsystem

More details are available at Windows Subsystem for Linux Installation Guide for Windows 10

  1. Open PowerShell as Administrator and run: 
     Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux
  2. Restart your computer when prompted.

Install Ubuntu Linux

More details are available at Windows Subsystem for Linux Installation Guide for Windows 10

  1. Open the Microsoft Store and search for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.
  2. Click Install.
  3. Launch Ubuntu and set up a user account.

Set up Jekyll environment

  1. Open PowerShell as Administrator and run:

    bash

  2. Update repo lists and packages:

    sudo apt-get update -y && sudo apt-get upgrade -y

  3. Install Ruby from the BrightBox repo: 
    sudo apt-add-repository ppa:brightbox/ruby-ng
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ruby2.5 ruby2.5-dev build-essential dh-autoreconf

  4. Update Ruby gems:

    sudo gem update

  5. Install Jekyll and Bundler:

    sudo gem install jekyll bundler

  6. Check if Jekyll is installed properly:

    jekyll -v

Warning. If you see a warning message similar to “operating_system.rb:10: warning: constant gem::configmap is deprecated”, you may try to downgrade the RubyGems by running: gem update --system 3.0.6

Generating a site

Navigate to the directory that will contain a site and run this command

jekyll new .

It generates the default site.

Running a site on your local machine

The site may be served by running the jekyll command

jekyll serve

However, it’s best to use the bundler to avoid dependencies’ versioning nightmare

bundle exec jekyll serve

Jekyll site structure explained

A directory structure of Jekyll site:

File/Directory Description
_config.yml Contains configuration data
_drafts This directory contains files that are unpublished posts (drafts). The files name format: title.MARKUP, e.g. draft-post.md. To preview the site with drafts, run jekyll serve --drafts
_posts This directory contains files that are published posts. The file name format: YEAR-MONTH-DAY-title.MARKUP, e.g. 2020-03-14-getting-started-with-jekyll.markdown. A markdown file may contain permalinks that provide the output path for pages. The date and format of the post is determined by the file’s name only
_layouts This directory contains files that are templates for the posts. The layout of the post should be defined in the front matter, which is a simple YAML block at the beginning of the post file. The front matter must be placed at the beginning of the file and wrapped by triple-dashed lines
_includes These are the files that can be included in layouts and posts. The inclusion is possible by using a liquid tag {%include file.ext %}
_data This directory contains data that is supposed to be placed in well-formatted files, e.g. .yml, .json, .csv. The Jekyll can autoload these formats. The data from filename.yml is accessible via site.data.filename reference
_sass Jekyll generates main.css based on main.scss. The generated file is used by a site to configure styles. This directory contains sass partials that may be imported into the main.scss
_site This directory contains the generated site
.jekyll-metadata This file is used by Jekyll to track modifications since the site was last built.
index.html, index.md and other HTML, Markdown files These files will be transformed by Jekyll if they contain the front matter section
Other files and directories All other files that may be used by the site, e.g. images, styles, scripts

Configuring Jekyll site

The configuration is placed in the _config.yml file. There are properties that are generated by Jekyll by default.