Getting started with Jekyll on Windows platform

There are many blogs and videos on how to set up Jekyll on Windows, but it can be confusing and complex, especially for those who are unfamiliar with Linux and Jekyll. This is due to version incompatibility and the fact that Jekyll is not officially supported on the Windows platform. A lot of the relevant material is also more than a year old. When using templates and themes, it can be difficult to deal with gems and bundles, especially if you are not familiar with Ruby and Rails. This post aims to help you use this powerful static website development tool and set it up on Windows without any hassle.

To start, I recommend following this simple video tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTX_uh_v99I

There are also many templates available that you can use to develop a beautiful website with powerful functionality. Check them out here: http://themes.jekyllrc.org/

Here are some tips for saving time during the setup process:

  1. Follow all the steps carefully, and remember to restart PowerShell as an administrator every time it is mentioned.

2.If the bundle is not the latest version and you try to use the already existing templates (may be from http://themes.jekyllrc.org/) you may get a “gem not found” error. In this case, force the bundle to switch to the latest version.

  1. Here’s another useful video if you are having problems setting up templates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bty7LHm14CA The most common problems that I have noticed are related to relative path and slash ‘/’.

  2. It’s worth understanding the basic functionality of Jekyll and how it is used with GitHub, especially if you are a developer or even if you just want to create a basic portfolio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWVjQsvQocA

  3. If your localhost (which is 4000 by default with Jekyll) shows a blank page, try clearing the cache and restarting your computer before attempting to reinstall Ruby or gems.

  4. If you encounter an error with the ‘jekyll serve’ command due to version mismatch, try using ‘bundle exec jekyll serve’ instead.

I hope this helps!

Written on September 7, 2017