Jekyll is the Samurai sword of content management systems
Pros
- Jekyll is a joy to use for people who aren't intimidated by HTML, CSS, and Markdown. It gets out of your way, giving you the power to build a website that would be a pain to build in straight HTML, but without imposing the needless complexity so many other CMS's bolt on.
- Jekyll sites tend to be extremely fast, and can be made even faster with very little effort on the webmaster's part. All you're serving are static assets.
- A big advantage of Jekyll is the ability to check in your entire site, content and all, into version control. You never have to worry about upgrading your site and losing your content. It's all backed up in GitHub, or any other git hosting you choose to use.
- Jekyll sites can be run at near-zero costs. Host it for free on GitHub Pages, and the only expense you have left is a domain name, about $10 a year.
- You can do most things with Jekyll you'd think would require a database and CMS. Blogging comes built in. Comments, contact forms, and many other common features can be embedded into your site from another service. With a little clever programming, most sites really don't need the complexity and speed impediments of a database.
Cons
- Straight out of the box, Jekyll lacks a friendly WordPress-style back-end. You'll be working in Liquid (HTML), Sass (CSS), and Markdown (content) files. If you're already comfortable with these languages, you'll feel at home in no time. If not, you may need to consider getting someone else's expertise to set up the site, and then use another back-end (probably paid) to make editing your site's files less intimidating.
- If you use GitHub Pages for the free hosting, be forewarned that GitHub only white lists a few plugins for their own compilation. This usually isn't a problem (you can compile on your own computer if need be), but can be annoying at times.
Return on Investment
- Jekyll has kept our costs low, very low, on all the projects I've used on it. Think $10 a year low.
Alternatives Considered
WordPress, Blogger and Umbraco CMS
Other Software Used
Chrome DevTools, Google Analytics, Google Drive
