I recently rebuilt my personal site using Jekyll, and I wanted to document the process for anyone interested in doing the same.

Why Jekyll?

I chose Jekyll for several reasons:

  • GitHub Pages native support - No need to set up CI/CD
  • Markdown for content - Writing posts is as easy as writing notes
  • Static site - Fast, secure, and cheap to host

The Setup Process

Setting up Jekyll was straightforward:

# Install Ruby (if needed)
brew install ruby

# Install Jekyll
gem install jekyll bundler

# Create a new site
jekyll new my-site

# Serve locally
bundle exec jekyll serve

Custom Features I Added

Beyond the basic setup, I added:

  1. Tag system for organizing posts
  2. Goals dashboard for tracking yearly objectives
  3. Archive page for past dashboards
  4. Search functionality for finding posts quickly

Lessons Learned

The biggest lesson was keeping things simple. It’s tempting to add every feature you can think of, but a clean, focused site is better than a cluttered one.

If you’re thinking about building your own site, I’d encourage you to start with Jekyll. It’s a great balance of simplicity and power.