I have moved to Jekyll and it's a beautiful way to build static websites. There is no visual interface and it's a perfect platform for people who like to write in Markdown.
Moving away from WordPress
I had been using WordPress for over a year and it had been a great companion. However, it did come with many strings attached.
- My website grew heavier with each passing month
- I had to logon to my website to make any change
- Everything was online
- I needed a database
- For each change, I had to upload my theme
Why Jekyll is so cool?
Jekyll is absolutely brilliant. Because of Jekyll my coding standards have improved and my website has evolved.
First of all, I have a greater control on my website. I develop a base template for my pages and then I nest the other templates into it. It sounds a bit complex, but it gives me the freedom to make changes easily and in a fast manner.
Secondly, I can write everything in Markdown. It’s quite insane because I love Markdown.
Thirdly, my website site has reduced because everything is in the form of static HTML pages.
How did I make it happen?
With a simple WordPress plugin, I exported all my posts to Markdown and just dumped them to a _posts folder. In a couple of hours, my templates were ready to function and the stylesheet was ready for action.
If I have to count the total number of hours it took me to move my website from WordPress to Jekyll along with a good amount of designing, it would be not be more than 10 hours. And I am quite happy with the result.
What my site uses?
- Obviously, Jekyll
- inuit.css written by the awesome Harry Roberts
- The code was written on my Ubuntu machine called “Rawrrr!” (that’s the reason for the name of the site too)
- Fonts served via Typekit
Notes
Harry has also moved his website to Jekyll recently and he made a blog for inuit.css too.