Building This Blog with Jekyll
Jekyll has crossed my path in the past, and I decided to start blogging again. Jekyll was my obvious choice. Wordpress would be my other option, but that requires a web server. I would rather just have a static site for now.
Tools I Am Using
- Jekyll for blog generation
- Jekyll theme
- GitHub for source control
- Travis for CI
- html-proofer for checking links
- atom or vi for editing
- Google analytics for tracking
- Grammarly to help with my spelling
Jekyll
From here:
Transform your plain text into static websites and blogs.
It is called simple on their site, but there is a learning curve. If you are a gearhead developer that like CLI, the Jekyll is amazing. If you are a marketing department, use Wordpress.
The _config.yml
configures Jekyll, and some tweaks that took a bit to figure
out:
Here is a link to my current configuration.
Jekyll Theme
Jekyllthemes.org has a ton of free themes. My wife did not like the colors for a solarized theme, but did like monochrome. Clean, simple layout. I have some issues with CSS for code line numbers which I am not able to work out yet, and I made some tweaks for tables.
Github
Do I have to write much about this? But using source control is a way of life for me. Using source control with Jekyll is trivial.
Travis for CI
Travis, CircleCI, and Jenkins are probably the chief tools in the ecosystem. Kops, and a lot of the other projects I am a part of run Travis. Hence why I chose Travis. I started with the instructions here, but I modified my .travis.yml file.
I do not have the automatic deployment of my blog yet. Travis can push the blog to an object store, but I have not worked it out fully yet.
html-proofer
This HTML tool is super nice! Check your links, and HTML validation. A spelling and grammar tool would be awesome.
You can run it locally. I got a weird error that the binary was missing when I tried to run it locally. Besides, why would I not use a container to run it?
Editor
Not going to elaborate, but with Jekyll, you are editing markdown and YAML files. Pick your favorite editor and rock it! My choice is vi or atom.
Google Analytics
I will go into more details when I blog about my hosting solution, but I have used GA for years.
Grammarly
Grammarly helps me a TON. I am good at writing, but spelling and past tense are enemies! Grammarly is free for spelling and other checks, but checking for “past tense” requires a subscription. I would like to figure out how to integrate Grammarly with atom or vi. Just googled online, and NADA.
Next Steps
Chrislovecnm.com needed an internet home. I will cover that in another post.