It’s alive!
I’ve moved to Jekyll.
Why?
I fooled around with MiddleManApp, Sitepress and BrigeTown however I just prefered Jekyll. It has all the data and collection powers I need and is simple and easy to develop with. Native support for liquid templates and markdown content, no node by default and a modern, supported sass implementation helped it win the comparison for me.
Markdown
The markdown is easy
## Why?
I _fooled_ around with [MiddleManApp](https://middlemanapp.com/), ...
Data
It’s simple and easy to fetch the data I want from my YAML files
{% assign home_testimonials = site.data.testimonials | where: 'location', 'home' %}
{% for testimonial in home_testimonials limit :3 %}
<div class="col">
{% include _testimonial.html testimonial=testimonial %}
</div>
{% endfor %}
Handy Plugins
Jekyll has all the handy plugins I need to make a simple website.
# Gemfile
gem 'jekyll-archives'
gem "jekyll-sitemap"
gem "jekyll-seo-tag"
# and then in head include:
{% seo %}
# which gets all the basic SEO stuff done:
<meta name="generator" content="Jekyll v4.3.3" />
<meta property="og:title" content="Welcome to Jekyll!" />
<meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" />
<meta name="description" content="It’s alive! I’ve moved to Jekyll." />
<meta property="og:description" content="It’s alive! I’ve moved to Jekyll." />
<link rel="canonical" href="http://localhost:4000/notes/2024/welcome-to-jekyll/" />
<meta property="og:url" content="http://localhost:4000/notes/2024/welcome-to-jekyll/" />
<meta property="og:site_name" content="willbarker.dev" />
<meta property="og:type" content="article" />
<meta property="article:published_time" content="2024-02-28T15:56:39+00:00" />
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary" />
<meta property="twitter:title" content="Welcome to Jekyll!" />
The OG
Jekyll is the grandaddy of static site generators and is well supported by the JAMStack ecosystem. Deployment with things like render.com is super simple as it detects that it is a Jekyll project and sets up all the settings correctly first go.
Wrap
So that’s a wrap. A new site, no fuss no muss. Hopefully I’ll have time for some more tech notes now.