In the last few days I took some time to set up my GitHub Pages site. I dediced to use the Jekyll static website generator as recommended by the GitHub Pages docs.

It’s pretty straightforward, you can just follow the GitHub Pages site creation with Jekyll howto.

Install Jekyll as described in the Jekyll docs.

Then create a GitHub repository for your site. In my case: arthurhobspice.github.io.

In a local folder, run git init, then jekyll new --skip-bundle. Edit the Gemfile as described in the howto, so that the github-pages gem is activated. Save and close and run bundle install. Then you can view and test your pages locally: run the “server” with bundle exec jekyll serve and open the URL localhost:4000 in your browser. Changes to the files will automatically be applied (except for _config.yml, changes here require a restart of the server). The locally generated content is in the _site subfolder (excluded by .gitignore).

Edit _config.yml to personalize the index page (header and footer). For example, I added an author definition and the linkedin_username.

The site is created with the default “Minima” theme. I wasn’t successful setting another theme (“Cayman”) so far, the local preview doesn’t show the theme - left for later investigation.

After creation of a new document e.g. unixtraining.markdown with layout:, title: and permalink: definitions, the header of the main (index) page gets a link to the new page automatically.

Finally, commit and push your site files to the GitHub repository. A few seconds later a GitHub Actions workflow will publish your page.

Check out the Jekyll docs for more info on how to get the most out of Jekyll. File all bugs/feature requests at Jekyll’s GitHub repo. If you have questions, you can ask them on Jekyll Talk.