
Jekyll, the blog engine of kings - samstokes
http://chrismdp.github.com/2009/12/jekyll/
======
1gor
There is a wonderful ruby/rake based static website generator
<http://webby.rubyforge.org>. It offers a choice of templating languages (ERB,
Textile, Markdown, HAML, SASS), and doesn't force you to use Liquid.

Jekyll is a spin-off of a server-side application. Safety features of Liquid
templates make sense on the server, but for a desktop application using Liquid
is completely pointless. In Webby you are free to do whatever you want with
ruby using erb or haml.

Another killer feature is ability to write plugins for Webby in a snap. For
example, Webby can process LaTeX snippets and generate formula images for your
web page. There is even a gnuplot plugin that lets you plot data that you save
alongside your document.

~~~
sohooo
I tried Webby before and liked it. I'm now using Nanoc3[1], which has tagging
and a lot of other nice features, especially for blogs, right out of the box.

[1] <http://nanoc.stoneship.org/>

------
r11t
I am thinking of switching my purely Jekyll based blog to using Octopress
which is a blogging framework based on Jekyll and has these features :

* A nice, easy to configure theme that focuses on readability.

* Built in support for Twitter, Delicious, Disqus Comments, Google Analytics, and Custom Search.

* Rake tasks that make development fast, and deploying easy.

Github repo : <http://github.com/imathis/octopress>

------
sriramk
Jekyll is absolutely brilliant. There are a lot of static blog generation
tools out there but this seems to work best for me. I dont use the github
integration much (automatic publishing by pushing to github) but do store my
site on a github repo.

The only downside as with any static site solution is comments. I currently
use Disqus - I have no complaints with them except that I like to own my
comments rather than hosting them with a 3rd party.

~~~
mapleoin
another downside is that you have to regenerate your whole site manually every
time you make a small design change.

~~~
derefr
The more semantic you make your HTML, the less that this tends to matter.
Right now I'm actually <section>ing and <article>ing my way around my site, so
when I want to change the design, I head straight for the one place it's
actually described: the CSS.

~~~
loup-vaillant
Not to mention the template mechanism. With my (home made) site generation
tool, I changed the whole design of my site by changing exactly 2 files : the
template, and the css.

------
nudded
For the more adventurous, here a Haskell port.
<http://github.com/jaspervdj/Hakyll>

------
compay
I played around with Jekyll a bit and while it's cool, there were a few things
I didn't like, such as the fact that you're limited to one "posts" feed,
rather than being able to easily publish arbitrary content and have multiple
feeds. I also wanted to be able to use Haml instead of Liquid, and dump the
configuration into my primary layout rather than in a separate file.

So I grabbed my yak-shaving kit, and rolled my own library in Lua. It's not
entirely done, but I'm using it and it may be interesting to you if you like
to work with Lua.

<http://github.com/norman/grackle>

------
bphogan
I had to use Jekyll the other day for something relatively small and it
frustrated me, but that's because I've been using StaticMatic
(<http://staticmatic.rubyforge.org/>) for about a year and, let me tell you,
it's the bees' knees. The cat's pajamas, if you will. Haml, Sass, Rails-like
templates, generates the html and css to upload to your site. I added a deploy
script that minifies my css and js, and it's been a thrill to work with.

------
colbyolson
I wish Hyde (the python equiv) had this much support/momentum.

<http://github.com/lakshmivyas/hyde>

~~~
metajack
There is also another Python one called Igor:
<http://github.com/aconbere/igor>

------
mstef
you might also try out utterson, a unix based variant (make, zsh, ksh, awk,
m4, etc): <http://github.com/stef/utterson>

~~~
mahmud
Does it really use both zsh and ksh? If you have to install two different
shells for their functions, why not just use a real scripting language like
Perl or Python?

~~~
mstef
unfortunately currently yes, but it is high on my list to reduce this to ksh
only. but anyway everyone should have ksh for scripting and zsh for
interactive shelling if you ask me. ;)

------
mavelikara
Jekyll is a promising tool, but not having tags is a pain. Also, markup errors
are silently swallowed when running jekyll --server --auto.

~~~
charlesmarshall
you can use categories as a yaml listing and that works.. just means the url
for the post will become /cat1/cat2/date-title.html

