What is Jekyll?

Jekyll is what web site developers call a static-site content management system (CMS).

The “content management system” part is easy to understand. Web site authors every where use content management systems like Jekyll and WordPress to build easy-to-maintain web sites without needing extensive technical skills.

To make the static part of “static-site CMS” easier to understand, it helps to compare static-site CMS to dynamic-site CMS solutions.

Dynamic sites vs static sites

Dynamic sites

Some web pages are built on demand. That is, when you click on a link, a series of computer programs and different computers work together in real time to combine content, design and computer code. This web page is created on the fly and sent specifically to the site visitor who requested it.

Dynamic CMSs makes it more efficient for web developers to re-use and quickly update the parts of a web page that are common across a whole web site–navigation bars, logos, headers and footers–without generating every single page on the site from scratch each time something changes.

Dynamic CMSs also come with form-based writing and design tools–that is, you can point and click to make text bold instead of using complex HTML.

Static sites

Static-site CMSs also allow the re-use of common web site elements like logos and navigation.

The primary difference is that static-site content management systems–like this one–create all of the webpages a visitor might see not when a visitor visits but when a web site author changes something.

Static site generators, like Jekyll, often use text-based formatting and design rather than point-and-click writing tools. However, the formatting commands are simplified and easier to work with. For instance, to make text bold, you put two asterisks around a word or sentence: **bold**.

Pros and Cons of Dynamic Sites

Because a web site visitor triggers the generation of a page when they visit, it can be easier for a web site administrator to manage very large sites with hundreds of thousands of pages of content–like newspapers or university web sites.

Dynamic sites are subject to hacking, though. If a hostile computer user finds their way into the database or design settings of a dynamic web site, they can change things, add viruses, or break the whole site. Large companies with lots of resources can afford to spend the time and money to constantly monitor dynamic sites for intruders with bad intent.

Static sites are far less subject to hacking, which makes long-term maintenance easier. Sites like this one, which use a program called Jekyll to generate all of the page elements, can still be updated regularly. The downside is that each change requires that the entire site be regenerated, which can take time for sites with more than a few hundred pages.

Why Choose a Static Site?

Unless you have lots of time and money to check on your site daily, static sites are easier to maintain.

If you don’t have thousands of pages of content, static sites are almost as easy to update and change.

Dynamic sites are also often more costly than static sites to maintain because dynamic sites require several different kinds of web services integrated together, to function properly, while dynamic sites only require a single, simplified kind of web service.

For people who want easy site maintenance and are willing to learn a few basic skills, static sites are much easier in the long run.