A REAL beginner tutorial?

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1

Hi,
That’s my first post on a second attempt to figure out Jekyll. I don’t think I’m utterly stupid, so I should be able to go through it, but I’m starting to feel it’s not a tool for beginners… I’ve seen some nice tutorials out there on the web (like Django Girls, where everything is actually crystal clear), but Jekyll docs is totally not beginner-friendly.

So, my actual question is, on Windows, do I really need to get through a massacre of installing this:
https://gcc.gnu.org/install/prerequisites.html
Just to be able to get GCC, which is required by Jekyll, or is it included somehow in the ruby+devkit installer?

The same question is valid for Make, another prerequisite.

I know, I know, Windows is not the default environment, but hey - if there’s an installation Guide for Windows, then it’s doable right?

And - if it turns out that GCC and Make don’t have to be compiled, what’s the next step? Quickstart? Or Step by Step Tutorial? As they have differing instructions…

Any help would be appreciated.

1 Like
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have you seen:

I use wondows and have not had any problems installing or using jekyll.

I don’t know what GCC or Make is, I just install ruby with the devkit - though it looks like you don’t have to do that any more if you follow the instructions for the latest ruby 2.4.

Seems like you have more than one question - I would focus on installing it first, then its up to you what you want to do. Either start a new project from scratch or convert something, or download someone else’s project and redo that as your own.

I do think that Jekyll is not all that friendly for beginners, you do need to use the command line and learn some liquid syntax stuff. But it isn’t too bad - but it will require some effort.

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if you go to youtube and search for jekyll tutorial you will find a few series - I really liked the one by Thomas Bradley - it is pretty old at this point, but the basics are the same.

(not really linking to that installation video - that is just the first one in the series)

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Thanks,

I have no issue using the command line and stuff like that, but the page you linked is EXACTLY what my problem is. Did you read the prerequisites? :slight_smile:

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people read the requirements?? ha ha - JK.

I have a new computer, did not have ruby on it yet so I just did it - took about 6-7 minutes total.

All I did was go to https://rubyinstaller.org/downloads/ and downloaded 2.6.6.1 - from the top list where it includes the dev kit. Like the jekyll windows installation says at the end it will ask if you want to do ridk which was preselected so I said yes, that opened a command prompt where it asked me what I wanted to install - 1,2 or 3 - I just pressed enter and it did the default 1 and 3 I think.

When that finished I did gem install jekyll and that installed no problem.

I did this in Powershell. You do have to close Powershell after installing ruby to get the updated path - sometimes in the past I have had to reboot.

I checked to see if I have GCC installed and I do not. Jekyll seems to work fine, I just created a new site and served it and it was fine.

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You’re just confirming my thoughts. The docs of Jekyll is the worst good looking documentation I’ve seen.

Yeah, I think I’ll pass and find something more user friendly. Thanks for your time though.

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My whole knowledge on Jekyll is entirely based on these tutorials. I built all of my website just with the stuff I learned on there.

Enjoy!