Little Jekyll

Looking for the download? Right this way.

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Jekyll is a pretty awesome website generator. You use it to write and manage your content in standard formats, and Jekyll builds the website for you.

Learning and the command-line barrier

You need minimal knowledge to make use of it. As soon as you know a bit of Markdown (which really, is just text with some extra punctuation), you can create articles and manage the structure of a site built with Jekyll.

Someone who knows a bit of HTML on top of that can modify themes and templates too!

What’s great about languages like HTML and CSS is that they’re easy to experiment with: documentation is readily available, tutorials are plenty.

Most importantly, writing code in a file and trying it in a browser is really fast. You can get into these quick loops of trying out something, seeing the result, and doing it over until you’ve created what you’re after. Then you try something new!

However, Jekyll asks something else of the user: it’s’ only usable through the command-line of the operating system.

In comparison, the command-line imposes itself. If your tool uses the command line, you have to learn the command line first. No negotiation.

So what can I do about that?

Spreading out learning opportunities

I built Little Jekyll! Simply put, it’s a graphical interface over Jekyll.

By using Little Jekyll, you can abstract the command-line interface for now. This lets you get acquainted with Jekyll’s basic functions real fast. I mean it.

It’s a tool built for people to eventually not need it anymore.

It makes it easier to try the pipeline (what you give it, and what it renders in return). At some point, if you like and keep using Jekyll, you’ll probably get interested in its more complicated commands anyway. At that point, you’ll have outgrown Little Jekyll.

Useful day-to-day

I also wanted to help with managing multiple sites, and resuming your work in progress. Little Jekyll keeps a list of its managed sites, and restarts servers that were running when it was last closed.

The app also watches the site(s) that are being served, and reloads browser windows when it detects that a site has been modified. Because you’re a great person and you deserve it.

Little Jekyll is available for Linux and Mac OS X.

I’m working on a Windows version but I mean wow I don’t wish that onto anyone