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. A blog index for all posts
  2. An about page for a short introduction
  3. A small custom stylesheet to keep the reading experience pleasant

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.