The Strange Case of Jekyll and Prose

Presented by Dylan Staley / @dstaley

Table of Contents

  1. Why static sites are amazeballs
  2. The beast that is Jekyll
  3. How to succeed with Jekyll without really trying

Static Sites

static site

noun

website where pages are stored as individual HTML files and served without server-side rendering.

Benefits Galore

  • Easy to setup
  • Secure
  • Fast
  • Works well with CDNs
  • Stupid Super easy to deploy

GitHub, S3, and more (oh my!)

GitHub


							$ git add -am "Changed some stuff"
$ git push origin gh-pages

S3 (with the s3_website gem)

$ s3_website push

Easy deploys to Google App Engine, Heroku, and anything else capable of serving HTML files.

The Mantra of Jekyll

Simple

Static

Blog-aware

How to catch a Jekyll


~ $ gem install jekyll
~ $ jekyll new my-awesome-site
~ $ cd my-awesome-site
~/my-awesome-site $ jekyll serve
# => Now browse to http://localhost:4000

DEMO

++

“Prose provides a beatifully simple content authoring environment for CMS-free websites. It's a web-based interface for managing content on GitHub. Use it to create, edit, and delete files, and save your changes directly to GitHub. Host your website on GitHub Pages for free, or set up your own GitHub webhook server.”

DEMO

WHY?!?

  1. It's free (as in speech and as in beer).
  2. It's easier than Wordpress (or any other CMS).
  3. Mortals can make changes to site content.
  4. Holy hell it's fast.
  5. The new healthcare.gov was built using it.
  6. Used by nerds all over the world.

WHY NOT?!?

  1. You hate things that are simple.
  2. You feel comfortable when there is a mySQL database involved.
  3. You want to be the only person who understands how to make changes.
  4. You like a site where only five people can view it at a time.

But seriously: why not?

  1. You're working with user-data. (Uploads, oAuth, etc.)
  2. You need complex server-side functionality.*

Thanks!

Reference