Documentation

Jekyll Static Site Generator

Jekyll is a static site generator. My VPS has 1 GB RAM so it was hard to implement jekyll in the server site. So it is essentially a hack on order to make it work. What we will do is,

  • Generate the static site in local computer via bundle exec jekyll build
  • push the static files along with the assets to github.
  • pull the files from the github in to the server
  • serve it via nginx

Installation

Local Setup

gem install jekyll bundler
jekyll new myblog
cd myblog
bundle exec jekyll serve

browse to http://localhost:4000open in new window in order to see it work in function.

After seting up, we'll need to -

  • write blog
  • serve

writing posts

Folder structure: There are various folders in the project but we are interested only in two folders.

  • _post [writing folder]
  • _site [output folder]

You'll write the blog in _post folder {: .message }

Keep in mind the following:

  • file name preferably in the format of YYYY-MM-DD-title-of-the-post.md

  • The frontmatter of the .md files have minimum two elements:

    • title
    • layout

e.g.

---
title: This is the title
layout: default
---

build

In order to build, you can execute

bundle exec jekyll build

You'll find the output files _site folder {: .message }

git push to github:

Pushing the repo for the first time

Goto _site (e.g. cd /var/www/jekyll/_site) folder and execute the following:

git remote add origin git@github.com:<user>/<repo>.git
git branch -M main
git push -u origin main

This will push the repo to the github in order to pull to the server.

pushing the repo subsequent times

git add .
git commit -m "message"
git push

Server Setup

Git clone the repo: [One time only]

SSH in to the server and execute the following the server terminal.

git clone git@github.com:<user>/<repo>.git

For subsequent updates, just use git pull in order to update the repo in the server.

nginx setup:

goto /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default and add the following:

server {
        server_name domain.com;
        root /path/to/repo;
        index index.html;
        error_page 404 /404.html;
}

and you're done.

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