

Tom Preston-Werner: Development of Jekyll to be revived in 2013 - parkr
https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll/issues/578#issuecomment-11414645
It appears that Tom Preston-Werner, current CEO of Github, is going to give Jekyll, his most popular open-source project, some love in the New Year.
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zmanji
A serious alternative to Jekyll is Nanoc[1]. It is absurdly easy to compile
any format to another format using a simple 'Rules' file. I for example have
pandoc -> HTML with custom syntax highlighting and LaTeX -> pdf on my personal
website [2]. Everything is customization and configurable so you can have your
own conventions for posts, etc.

[1]: <https://github.com/ddfreyne/nanoc> [2]:
<https://github.com/zmanji/zameermanji.com>

~~~
moe
I have to strongly advise against nanoc and recommend middleman[1] instead.

The problems with nanoc unfortunately only become apparent after you've
invested significantly into it and your site starts to grow in complexity
and/or size (file-count). I've been there and it wasn't fun at all...

The first problem is the obscure Rules DSL. It feels somewhat elegant in the
beginning when you're mostly working of the canned examples. But once you
divert from the beaten paths it quickly turns into a hairy mess and you find
yourself with a >300 lines rules file, various workarounds tacked into the
'preprocess'-block, a conglomerate of "filters" and "helpers", and a rapidly
fading memory of "How did all this fit together again?".

The second problem is performance. If your site contains auto-generated parts
(e.g. API-docs) then the number of files may quickly grow into the thousands.
Nanoc doesn't cope well at such sizes. In the end the compile-phase took 10
minutes(!) for my ~9k file-project on a beefy machine.

That said, nanoc _is_ okay for smallish projects, just beware the constraints.

Middleman has been a more pleasant experience here (after the porting pains).
It's a much more straightforward design. I can come back to it after a month
or two and be immediately productive again. With nanoc this always involved a
lot of pain re-learning the Rules-magic and interdependencies...

[1] <http://middlemanapp.com>

~~~
cbhl
Do you have any resources for anyone who is porting from
jekyll/octopress/nanoc to middleman? Even a short post describing particular
porting pains you ran into and how you mitigated them would be great.

~~~
moe
Well, I started by first cobbling together a basic middleman "hello world" app
and then fleshing it out until I met my legacy app in the middle. There wasn't
much straight porting from nanoc (apart from the HTML, JS and CSS) since the
ruby-logic doesn't quite translate between the two.

I'd recommend to look at the "community templates" (linked from the MM-site).
The "HTML5 Boilerplate"-template had nearly everything covered that I was
interested in (I only swapped out 'suzy' for 'less') and since MM is such a
simple design it really only took a few hours to feel at home.

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bradgessler
If you like Jekyll, check out <http://middlemanapp.com/>.

~~~
patrickg
Wow that looks fantastic. It's like jekyll, just different. Highly
configurable, supports many layout templating engine and well documented. I
especially like the i18n part.

~~~
lukeholder
another vote for middleman!

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fortes
This is fantastic news. I use Jekyll for many things, but was getting sick of
it not supporting fenced code blocks in Markdown.

So I made the classic mistake and built a Node.js Jekyll clone -- there are a
few other static site generators in Node, but none used the exact same file
structure as Jekyll (unless I missed some, which is entirely possible).

It now handles most Jekyll sites I've tested, including Mojombo's:

<https://github.com/fortes/enfield>

or

`npm install -g enfield`

Supports plugins as well. Patches welcome!

~~~
fortes
Well, it looks like Jekyll finally supports fenced code blocks (added in
RedCarpet 2) ... my wait is over:
[https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll/commit/098da3d3fa5b2946afc...](https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll/commit/098da3d3fa5b2946afcea8c8c7beb5d0a4fed7c0)

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tanepiper
I was quite disappointed with Jekyll/Octopress - output was ok, but trying to
dig into it was just a rabbits hole - so I started my own tool (still early in
dev but I'm going to be working on it over Christmas) -
<https://npmjs.org/package/hyde>

~~~
LeafStorm
That name is already taken by a Python port of Jekyll, that is actually
endorsed by Mojombo. You should probably change it.

~~~
tanepiper
Oh bugger - after some though (I wanted to keep the name and command short)
I've renamed it 'Nell' - after my dog <https://github.com/tanepiper/nell>

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stblack
This is great news, yes, but past failure to delegate is evident here.

Also life happens while making other plans.

So I welcome the announcement and I'll be super happy once umpteen long-
waiting pull requests are processed.

But somehing tells me, don't hold my breath.

~~~
parkr
It's in his best interest to stay in the project. He'll have others working on
it, and he'll want to ensure that he has some say in the direction of the
project.

You're safe to hold your breath. ;)

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elithrar
This is great news, especially given the Github Pages integration with Jekyll.
Having a programmer-friendly blog platform without the need to worry about
hosting/deployment (easy, but another time consumer) is a good thing.

One thing that Jekyll needs to improve is the process for getting a blog up
and running quickly. I turned to Octopress for that (being a Jekyll
"framework") but I think it's an function Jekyll itself could provide for.

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ottbot
I'm looking at building my company's CMS workflow with Jekyll so it's good to
near this.

I'll have non developers creating and maintaining pages and posts, so I'm
hoping I can build an easy workflow with just Jekyll and a bit of prose.io.
I've not found any sort of site generator/convertor that's geared for use by
non-developers.

~~~
parkr
I worked at Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, in their
Communications Dept (Administrative) to completely rewrite
<http://cals.cornell.edu> with Jekyll.

Our workflow included Github, the Github desktop clients, SublimeText 2, and a
script we wrote which would run `jekyll --auto --server 3000` so that the
person making the changes could ensure that it came out the right way before
committing to the repo. Pretty easy stuff.

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MattRogish
Super happy. I've made probably half dozen blogs using Octopress/Jekyll.
Looking forward to Octopress 2.1, which apparently is stalled:
<https://github.com/imathis/octopress/branches>

Hopefully this'll help spur Octopress dev, too.

~~~
imathis
Octopress has slowed down due to my need for help with a few things. I've
tried working with a few folks, but it hasn't worked out. Now I'm getting the
help I need and things are cranking up again. Believing that Jekyll has a
future is a great motivator too.

~~~
jberryman
Just wanted to say thanks and keep up the good work!

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stock_toaster
While I don't currently use jekyll any longer (switched to pelican[1] a while
back), it is great to see it being picked up again!

[1]: <https://github.com/getpelican/pelican>

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chaddeshon
Is anyone else using scriptogr.am? I love the idea of a static blog, but I
don't want to mess with installing and running the software.

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TheMakeA
As someone who has a pending pull request for Jekyll, I welcome this.

