Why use a static site generator? And Why Jekyll Specifically?

TL;DR: I’m cheap & lazy thrifty & efficient.

I’m thrifty.

This site is hosted on GitHub here. I’m doing this because it’s free and easy. Changing the contents of the website are as simple as committing and pushing. The domain was bought through Google Domains for $12 (thank god my name isn’t John Smith) and linked using this guide which took ~15 minutes. To compare alternatives for hosting, Squarespace costs $16/month; however, Squarespace is a lot easier than writing your own website from scratch. This brings me to why Jekyll specifically.

It’s easy.

I tried writing a website from scratch, and it’s still on my Github. I know a little about HTML/CSS/Javascript, but this quickly became too big a pain for what I had planned… What started as a simple idea to add a few, basic design elements quickly snowballed into semi-incoherent quick fixes. I needed a static site generator to simplify everything down, and Github pages already comes with Jekyll! The setup is a little much at the start, but it’s effortless once everything is setup. Editing pages is done in Markdown, and there are lots of themes that can be very easily incorporated. This makes Jekyll, in my opinion, as effortless as it get’s for free.