Jekyll
A static site generator powering GitHub Pages.
Jekyll converts Markdown content and Liquid templates into a static website. Jekyll's defining feature is its tight integration with GitHub Pages, which builds Jekyll sites automatically from any repository configured to publish a branch. This was the catalyst for Jekyll's popularity in the early 2010s and made personal blogs and project documentation sites easy to ship without operating a server.
Tom Preston-Werner, GitHub's co-founder, released Jekyll in 2008. The project remains MIT-licensed and is now maintained by a community of volunteers under the Jekyll organisation.
Jekyll has been overtaken in raw build performance by Hugo and Eleventy, and in modern frontend tooling by Astro, but it retains a substantial install base because of GitHub Pages and because many established static-site templates target it. For small documentation sites, personal blogs, and academic project pages, Jekyll plus GitHub Pages remains a popular zero-cost publishing path.
Install
gem install jekyll bundler Or: Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt install jekyll Fedora/RHEL: sudo dnf install rubygem-jekyll macOS: brew install jekyll
Authors
- Tom Preston-Werner (creator)
- Jekyll contributors