Jekyll Technology Intelligence

What is Jekyll?

Jekyll is a static site generator written in Ruby that transforms plain text into static websites. It's the engine behind GitHub Pages, making it one of the most widely deployed static site generators. Jekyll processes Markdown and Liquid templates into ready-to-publish HTML.

Created by Tom Preston-Werner (GitHub co-founder) in 2008, Jekyll pioneered the modern static site movement. Its blog-aware design understands posts, categories, and permalinks natively. Jekyll's integration with GitHub Pages means developers can host sites for free by simply pushing to a repository—no build step required on GitHub's infrastructure.

Key Features

Blog-Aware

• Posts: Date-based content organization
• Drafts: Unpublished post management
• Permalinks: Customizable URL structures
• Pagination: Built-in post pagination

Templating

• Liquid: Shopify's template language
• Layouts: Nested template inheritance
• Includes: Reusable template partials
• Front Matter: YAML metadata in files

Content Processing

• Markdown: Kramdown processor
• Sass: Built-in SCSS compilation
• CoffeeScript: JavaScript preprocessing
• Syntax Highlighting: Rouge highlighter

Data Files

• YAML data files
• JSON data support
• CSV data processing
• Site-wide variables

Use Cases

GitHub Pages Sites

Developers host project documentation, personal blogs, and organization sites on GitHub Pages. Jekyll's native integration means pushing Markdown files automatically builds and deploys the site.

Developer Blogs

Programmers write technical blogs with Jekyll's Markdown support. Code highlighting, math equations with MathJax, and syntax-aware snippets handle technical content well.

Project Documentation

Open source projects document APIs and usage with Jekyll. The Just the Docs and Minimal Mistakes themes provide documentation-ready layouts with search and navigation.

Personal Portfolios

Designers and developers showcase work using Jekyll themes. Collections feature organizes portfolio items, while front matter stores project metadata.

Company Blogs

Organizations run engineering blogs on Jekyll. Posts authored in Markdown by team members compile into fast-loading static pages without CMS overhead.

Landing Pages

Marketing teams create campaign landing pages. Jekyll builds pages that deploy anywhere—no server configuration, no security patches, just HTML files.

Code Examples

Post with Front Matter

---
layout: post
title: "Welcome to Jekyll"
date: 2024-01-15 14:30:00 -0500
categories: [tutorial, jekyll]
tags: [getting-started]
author: jane_doe
---

This is my first Jekyll post written in **Markdown**.

## Code Example

```ruby
puts "Hello, Jekyll!"
```

Check out the [Jekyll docs][jekyll-docs] for more info.

[jekyll-docs]: https://jekyllrb.com/docs/

Layout Template

<!-- _layouts/post.html -->
---
layout: default
---
<article class="post">
    <header>
        <h1>{{ page.title }}</h1>
        <time datetime="{{ page.date | date_to_xmlschema }}">
            {{ page.date | date: "%B %-d, %Y" }}
        </time>
    </header>

    {{ content }}

    <footer>
        {% for tag in page.tags %}
            <a href="/tags/{{ tag }}">{{ tag }}</a>
        {% endfor %}
    </footer>
</article>

{% if page.related_posts.size > 0 %}
    <h3>Related Posts</h3>
    {% for post in site.related_posts limit:3 %}
        <a href="{{ post.url }}">{{ post.title }}</a>
    {% endfor %}
{% endif %}

_config.yml

title: My Jekyll Site
email: [email protected]
description: A blog about web development
baseurl: ""
url: "https://example.com"

markdown: kramdown
highlighter: rouge

permalink: /:categories/:year/:month/:day/:title/

collections:
  projects:
    output: true
    permalink: /projects/:name/

defaults:
  - scope:
      path: ""
      type: "posts"
    values:
      layout: "post"
      author: "default_author"

plugins:
  - jekyll-feed
  - jekyll-seo-tag
  - jekyll-sitemap

Include Partial

<!-- _includes/nav.html -->
<nav>
    {% for item in site.data.navigation %}
        <a href="{{ item.url }}"
           {% if page.url == item.url %}class="active"{% endif %}>
            {{ item.title }}
        </a>
    {% endfor %}
</nav>

Ecosystem and Status

Theme Ecosystem

• Minimal Mistakes: Feature-rich personal/blog theme
• Just the Docs: Documentation-focused theme
• Chirpy: Text-focused blog theme
• Beautiful Jekyll: Easy-to-use blog theme

Plugin Ecosystem

• jekyll-feed: RSS/Atom feed generation
• jekyll-seo-tag: SEO meta tags
• jekyll-sitemap: Sitemap generation
• jekyll-paginate: Blog pagination

Strengths

• Native GitHub Pages integration
• Large theme ecosystem
• Mature and stable codebase
• Simple mental model

Considerations

• Ruby dependency can be complex to install
• Slower builds than Hugo for large sites
• Limited plugin support on GitHub Pages
• Development pace has slowed

Current Status

• Still actively maintained
• Default for GitHub Pages
• Stable but fewer new features
• Newer alternatives gaining popularity