Well, here we go with my first post on my new personal website built on GitPages.

I used to have a WordPress site and paid for hosting but, I never really got into it and eventually took it down. There is nothing wrong with WordPress, it is very powerful and has an amazing ecosystem built around it.

What changed for me to recreate a personal website was the need to build more of a on-line presence and share some things I have found useful. I knew if I could find a very simple, attractive, and low cost solution, I was more likely to keep it current and enjoy it.

The solution I’ve landed on is Gitpages on github.com along with the beautiful-jekyll template created by Dean Attali (Thanks Dean!).

Here is why I chose this route:

  1. Zero cost! GitHub Pages allows one free personal website per GitHub account.
  2. Easy setup in less than 5 minutes! The ability to fork an existing GitHub repo for a simple, attractive jekyll template and without having to install anything locally was easy.
  3. Easy to customize! I was able to use google and search github to find solutions from other folks that are using the same template.

I still have a lot to learn and work to do to get my site looking great but, I’ve got a good start with out much effort and zero cost.

Update 18-May-17: While it is not necessary, I did switch over to running Jekyll locally on my laptop to speed up making changes. The default docker file that is in the root of the clone of Dean’s beautiful-jekyll repo didn’t work for me. I found and used these instructions for Running Jekyll locally with Docker{target=”_blank”} and they worked great. You will need to also update your .gitignore file to ignore some of the local Jekyll stuff that you don’t need in your repo. Take a peek at mine.

If you are interested in trying this out, go visit Dean’s site here and then click on the green “Get Started” button and follow the directions.

Oh, and Happy Mother’s Day too if you happen to be a mother.