This weekend was devoted to creating the new website. Being a “would be” web developer, creating website seemed like a good idea. Having always liked the idea of static websites over the database-driven sites, I started playing with a website generator called Jekyell, which creates a website using a template and produce static HTML files that I can host anywhere.

Jekyll is a command-line tool, so it’s not for everyone, but it will take HTML and Markdown files and the Template (or Theme) and generate static HTML pages linked together with a consistent look and feel. That’s exactly what I was looking for. 

You may be asking yourself… “Why a static website?”.

  1. The first is that static websites can be hosted anywhere without any need to a database back end, which means I am open to host my website anywhere on very low spec servers and it will scale almost infinitely.  Secondly, static sites are a lot more secure that database-driven websites as the only way to modify the website is to upload the static files. Once the files are uploaded to the server, assuming that the server is secure, it is very difficult to change the files or inject any malicious code into them. 

  2. Well, Jekyll got me some of the way, but as a web developer, I appreciate my limitations when it comes to web design. I can generally make a website do and act like I want it to, but getting it to look good is a whole different ballgame. That is where Jekyll themes (or templates) come in. I found a free design, that I really liked, by Ben Centra, so I decided to use that. Ben, if you ever come across this page, thank you for being so talented and making a really excellent theme!

So after a bit of installation and setup, I finally for Jekyll installed and running on my Mac, and I love it. It’s simple and it does everything I ever wanted a static website generator to do. I have the basic layout and functioning of the website worked out, created myself a logo (can you work out what it is) and I’m ready to start publishing. I thought I would start with a development Blog and record some notes on what I learn while building this. I hope you enjoy the journey.