Lets install Jeykll on windows and start blogging! By the end of this blog you will have your Jeykll Site up and running on your Local Windows computer! Installing Jekyll is few easy steps that will not take more than 1 hour. Jump in! you might finish within 30 minutes as well : )

What is Jekyll? Why do I need it?

Well.. Do you need a site like Wordpress for blogging? or just want to host your portfolio? These are the common static site scenarios. Jekyll is the most popular static site genarator out there and Github Pages has built in support for it!

As a tech person, I am already using Vscode, git and hosting code on github.. if you are like me, learning curve is super easy and Jekyll is super fun!

Highlevel Steps and Prerequisite

I highly recommend the followings already installed before starting this blog posts.

  • Visual Studio Code : We will edit config files in this post. Why not to install VSCode we will already need an aweseome editor for editing our posts int he upcoming days!!
  • Git for Windows : As of the end of blog we will start working on our code. If theres any code/text we should start using git! But we also will need the git binaries to push and sync with Github as well. Yes! in later posts we will host our Jekyll site at GitHub pages!

High level steps:

  • Installing Ruby
  • Configuring Ruby
  • Install Jekyll Gem
  • Create your first site
  • Add required gems to your site.

Installing Jekyll

I assume you are running windows for your dev enironment and this guide covers installation for Windows.

Jekyll is a gem for Ruby (A gem is a pacakge in ruby). All we need to do is install and configure ruby, add the Jekkyl gem:

  • Install Ruby With DevKit on Windows (use one of the below options):
    • You can download Ruby installer and run manually. Download here
    • Use winget - Winget is built in to Windows 11. I recommend to upgrade to Windows 11 for development environment To install Ruby using Winget: winget install RubyInstallerTeam.Ruby

      Note: By Default Ruby is intalled in C:/Ruby24-x64

  • Once you install ruby dont uncheck the gui and run each option in the msy installer.

    Note: At this point C:/Ruby24-x64 should be appended to Path environment varible. If you are on Windows Terminal, you need exit and restart Windos Terminal. If you dont see the environment varible updated simply add manually.

  • Install the Jekyll package gem install jekyll bundler
  • Verify the installation by jekyll -v
  • Run jekyll new myblog . This will create a folder named myblog and install jekyll into myblog folder.

  • Run bundle exec jekyll serve to start the site.

    • in my case I had the following error. The soluıtion is to to add the Webrick dependency in your gem file.

      C:/Ruby31-x64/lib/ruby/gems/3.1.0/gems/jekyll-4.2.2/lib/jekyll/commands/serve/servlet.rb:3:in `require': cannot load such file -- webrick (LoadError)

    • Terminate the process by ctrl+c

    • Add the following to your GemFile.

      gem "webrick", "~> 1.7"
    • if you added the webrick to gem file you will need to run bundle install
    • To run the site run again bundle exec jekyll serve

  • As of now you will have the following output

    PS C:\temp\myblog>  bundle exec jekyll serve
Configuration file: C:/temp/myblog/_config.yml
            Source: C:/temp/myblog
      Destination: C:/temp/myblog/_site
Incremental build: disabled. Enable with --incremental
      Generating...
      Jekyll Feed: Generating feed for posts
                    done in 0.781 seconds.
Auto-regeneration: enabled for 'C:/temp/myblog'
    Server address: http://127.0.0.1:4000/
  Server running... press ctrl-c to stop.
[2022-09-28 13:45:24] ERROR `/favicon.ico' not found.

    Note: Dont worry about the icon error, the theme looks for by default. I never used it :)

  • Hapy Jekylling :) Browse to http://127.0.0.1:4000/ and Enjoy!