[Discuss] Jekyll users, experts, developers anywhere?

[dsr at randomstring.org (Dan Ritter)]

On Fri, Jun 01, 2018 at 08:24:24PM -0400, Nancy Allison wrote:
> Hello, all.
> 
> I am investigating software for a new blog. I've used Wordpress before and
> don't want to get bogged down in it again. I did some searches for open
> source blogging software, and it looks as if Jekyll might be a clean,
> simple alternative that meets my requirements. (However, I'm willing to
> believe that another blogging tool might be better.)
> 
> I am not the world's most technical person, so I'm looking for help. The
> Jekyll Quick Start Guide begins with this sentence:
> 
> "If you already have a full Ruby <https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/downloads/>
> development environment with all headers and RubyGems
> <https://rubygems.org/pages/download> installed (see Jekyll?s requirements
> <https://jekyllrb.com/docs/installation/#requirements>), you can create a
> new Jekyll site by doing the following:"
> 
> This is Greek to me. No, I don't have a Ruby development environment and
> have no idea how I'd get one.
> 
> I'm looking for suggestions for user groups, forums, consultants, etc.,
> etc. All suggestions gratefully received.

You probably already know that Jekyll is one of a class of
static website generators: it takes content written in Markdown,
combines it with templates that show how each page is
structured, and finally adds in CSS to control colors and
margins and fonts and so forth.

These have excellent performance and security characteristics,
but require a fair investment in learning how to run and use
them. In particular, Jekyll assumes that you are at least a
beginner Ruby programmer.

You'll need a server to run the software on. If you don't have
one set up, you're going to need to learn how. The cheapest
method is to rent a virtual machine from Linode or Digital Ocean
or similar; the cheapest VM at $5/month will do just fine.

Once you do that, you'll have a choice of operating system. For
example, if you choose Debian, installing jekyll and all the
dependencies is as simple as saying:

sudo apt install jekyll

and all the ruby bits that are necessary will be installed for
you, and then jekyll will be installed as well. You'll be able
to proceed from instructions on the Jekyll site.

If this sounds too daunting, you might want to pay a company to
run the software on your behalf. I don't know of anyone doing
Jekyll hosting in specific, but you might want to look into
Ghost, www.ghost.org, which supports its open-source development
by selling hosting services. I think it's kind of expensive at
$20 per month, but they really do everything for you except pick
out images and write the blog.

-dsr-