Jekyll

Initially developed to automatically generate and power the GitHub Pages service, Jekyll can also be deployed on standalone servers and help users run their very own website

Jekyll works by reading a template, running it through a Textile/Markdown and Liquid converters, and spitting out a complete static website.

It is very fast when it comes to compiling the site, and since the outputted resources are static HTML, CSS, and JS resources, the end-product is also very fast as well.

Jekyll is not a full-blown CMS, but merely a script that assembles the final website from content files and templates, without having to deal with a complex administration panel.

It works solely from the Ruby terminal and uses a very easy to understand folder structure.

Process:

Set up the basic structure of the site

Create some posts, or import them from a previous platform

Run the site locally to see how it looks

Deploy the site

What is new in this release:

• Liquid profiler (i.e. know how fast or slow your templates render)
• Incremental regeneration
• Add Hooks: a new kind of plugin
• Upgrade to Liquid 3.0.0
• site.posts is now a Collection instead of an Array
• Add basic support for JRuby
• Drop support for Ruby 1.9.3
• Support Ruby v2.2
• Support RDiscount 2
• Remove most runtime deps
• Move to Rouge as default highlighter
• Mimic GitHub Pages .html extension stripping behavior in WEBrick
• Always include file extension on output files
• Improved permalinks for pages and collections
• Sunset (i.e. remove) Maruku
• Remove support for relative permalinks
• Iterate over site.collections as an array instead of a hash
• Adapt StaticFile for collections, config defaults
• Add a Code of Conduct for the Jekyll project
• Added permalink time variables

What is new in version 3.0.0:

• Liquid profiler (i.e. know how fast or slow your templates render)
• Incremental regeneration
• Add Hooks: a new kind of plugin
• Upgrade to Liquid 3.0.0
• site.posts is now a Collection instead of an Array
• Add basic support for JRuby
• Drop support for Ruby 1.9.3
• Support Ruby v2.2
• Support RDiscount 2
• Remove most runtime deps
• Move to Rouge as default highlighter
• Mimic GitHub Pages .html extension stripping behavior in WEBrick
• Always include file extension on output files
• Improved permalinks for pages and collections
• Sunset (i.e. remove) Maruku
• Remove support for relative permalinks
• Iterate over site.collections as an array instead of a hash
• Adapt StaticFile for collections, config defaults
• Add a Code of Conduct for the Jekyll project
• Added permalink time variables

What is new in version 2.5.3 / 3.0.0-pre.beta8:

• Mention CSV files in the docs for data files
• Add trailing slash to paginate_path example
• Get rid of noifniof (excerpt_separator)
• Sass improvements, around nesting mostly
• Add webmentions.io plugin to the list of third-party plugins
• Add Sass mixins and use them
• Slightly compress jekyll-sticker.jpg
• Update gridism and separate out related but custom styles
• Add remote-include plugin to list of third-party plugins

What is new in version 2.5.3 / 3.0.0-pre.beta7:

• Mention CSV files in the docs for data files
• Add trailing slash to paginate_path example
• Get rid of noifniof (excerpt_separator)
• Sass improvements, around nesting mostly
• Add webmentions.io plugin to the list of third-party plugins
• Add Sass mixins and use them
• Slightly compress jekyll-sticker.jpg
• Update gridism and separate out related but custom styles
• Add remote-include plugin to list of third-party plugins

What is new in version 2.5.3 / 3.0.0-pre.beta5:

• Mention CSV files in the docs for data files
• Add trailing slash to paginate_path example
• Get rid of noifniof (excerpt_separator)
• Sass improvements, around nesting mostly
• Add webmentions.io plugin to the list of third-party plugins
• Add Sass mixins and use them
• Slightly compress jekyll-sticker.jpg
• Update gridism and separate out related but custom styles
• Add remote-include plugin to list of third-party plugins

What is new in version 2.5.3 / 3.0.0-beta1:

• Mention CSV files in the docs for data files
• Add trailing slash to paginate_path example
• Get rid of noifniof (excerpt_separator)
• Sass improvements, around nesting mostly
• Add webmentions.io plugin to the list of third-party plugins
• Add Sass mixins and use them
• Slightly compress jekyll-sticker.jpg
• Update gridism and separate out related but custom styles
• Add remote-include plugin to list of third-party plugins

What is new in version 2.5.0:

• Fixing a mistake in the name of the new Liquid tag
• Update Font Awesome to v4.2.0
• Fix link to #2895 in 2.4.0 release post
• Add Big Footnotes for Kramdown plugin to list of third-party plugins
• Remove warning regarding GHP use of singular types for front matter defaults
• Fix quote character typo in site documentation for templates
• Point Liquid links to Liquid's Github wiki
• Add HTTP Basic Auth (.htaccess) plugin to list of third-party plugins
• (Minor) Grammar & _config.yml filename fixes
• Added mathml.rb to the list of third-party plugins
• Add --force_polling to the list of configuration options
• Escape unicode characters in site CSS
• Add note about using the github-pages gem via pages.github.com/versions.json
• Update usage documentation to reflect 2.4 auto-enabling of --watch
• Add --skip-initial-build to configuration docs
• Fix a minor typo in Templates docs page
• Add a ditaa-ditaa plugin under Other section on the Plugins page
• Add build/serve -V option to configuration documentation

What is new in version 2.3.0:

• Don't require the scope key in front matter defaults
• No longer set permalink: pretty in the _config.yml for the site template
• Rework site template to utilize SASS
• Notify the user when auto-regeneration is disabled
• Allow partial variables in include tag filename argument
• Move instances of Time.parse into a Utils method
• Ignore subfolders in the _posts folder
• Front Matter default types should always be pluralized

What is new in version 2.2.0:

• Use .scss for site_template styles.
• Don't require the scope key in front matter defaults.
• No longer set permalink: pretty in the _config.yml for the site template.

What is new in version 2.1.0:

• Allow subclasses to override EXCERPT_ATTRIBUTES_FOR_LIQUID
• Add Jekyll.env and jekyll.environment (the Liquid var)
• Use _config.yaml or _config.yml (.yml takes precedence)
• Override collection url template
• Allow subdirectories in _data
• Extract Pagination Generator into gem: jekyll-paginate
• Utilize date_to_rfc822 filter in site template
• Add categories, last build datetime, and generator to site template feed
• Configurable, replaceable Logger-compliant logger
• Extract gist tag into a separate gem
• Add collection attribute to Document#to_liquid to access the document's collection label
• Upgrade listen to 2.7.6 <= x < 3.0.0

What is new in version 2.0.2:

• Bug Fixes:
• Correct use of url and baseurl in the site template.
• Default baseurl to "".
• Site Enhancements:
• Correct docs for the gist plugin so it always includes the username.
• Clarify new (defaults, where filter) features in docs.

What is new in version 1.4.3:

• Bug Fixes:
• Patch show-stopping security vulnerabilities.

What is new in version 1.4.0:

• Add support for TOML config files
• Sort plugins as a way to establish a load order
• Remove some duplication in the reading of posts and drafts

What is new in version 1.3.0:

• Added support for adding data as YAML files under a site's _data directory
• Allow variables to be used with include tags
• Allow using gems for plugin management

Requirements:

• RedCloth: Textile support (Ruby)
• Liquid: Templating system (Ruby)
• Classifier: Generating related posts (Ruby)
• Maruku: Default markdown engine (Ruby)
• Directory Watcher: Auto-regeneration of sites (Ruby)
• Open4: Talking to pygments for syntax highlighting (Ruby)
• Pygments: Syntax highlighting (Python)