Jekyll Setup

My first hands-on with Jekyll

Overview

Jekyll is a static site generator. It takes text written in markdown and uses layouts to create a static website. This allows me to use GitHub Pages for free hosting of my website. This deployment was my first experience with Jekyll.

Purpose

I set out to accomplish several goals with this project:

• Set up a portfolio website
• Leverage GitHub Pages for free hosting
• Become more familiar with GitHub CI/CD actions
• get exposure to Ruby

Skills & Lessons Learned

I learned a few new things, but as you may have noticed, I did not learn any Ruby.

• GitHub Actions aren’t very quick (compared to what I am used to with Azure DevOps Pipelines).
  • This may be the fact that it’s free and queing may impact the turnaround time as there could be numerous other projects vying for resources.
• Dev containers in VS Code are cool!
  • I open my repo project in a dev container within VS Code which gives me a proper Linux environment by default
    • F1 -> Dev Containers: Clone repository in container volume -> seanclosson.github.io
• The GitHub version Jekyll running their Pages is missing some common “gems”
  • This caused some issues early on, but I was able to resolve after numerous “wipe and create new” cycles so I could refine my process

Comments and notes

A few things I observed and some notes for the future:

• I should probably branch my code and follow proper merging for publication.
• I’d like to set up a notification webhook. Existing email alerts are slow.
• The site looks broken during the build, showing just layout: home # Index page, so don’t panic!
  • As I use the site more, I may want to schedule publishing for after-hours.
• Jekyll seems fragile or at least very sensitive to incorrect config and code.
  • Instead of a feature not working, the entire site can be broken
• The Chripy template is okay, but I’ll look at other templates to use or develop my own in the future.