Ok, I think I am done now. Everything seems to be installed. I do not know exactly what I did, but this time I did not receive any error messages. Later on, I will learn all that stuff, no doubt. but the very first goal is to have a very simple site (maybe just an index.html and some kind of basic CSS) visible in the browser.
It would be great, if you continue guiding me threw the process. Even if I feel a little bit simple minded.
What I know (or believe to know) is:
I have a place somewhere on my machine (Mac) where I can create files.
I need some webspace on GitHub where I can export the stuff I am doing on my local machine.
I need some programme that connects to the GH space and pushed my creation there.
I need to connect the GH-space with any URL (for the moment, I do not care, where it is visible. The first goal says: "any URL will be fine.)
So the basic questions:
How do I define that place where I work on my machine in the command line?
Can I fetch a readymade template or some kind of basic structure from somewhere and place it in my working folder?
How can I move it to github?
how do I connect it to a URL to make it visible?
Is there a basic tutorial available?
thanks
Raphael
I’m reading this thread and feeling for you! I went through a lot of this initially and here is what I can tell you at a high level. You need to install Ruby. Once you accomplish that step, you really won’t have to think about it any more. You will code your project with CSS (or SASS/SCSS), and HTML. You might use a few plugins and you will need to familiarize yourself with the super simple Liquid language (Shopify uses it for people designing stores).
After you follow the setup instructions you can create your site locally and then publish to a hosting provider. I actually use GitHub Pages, which is free so you and your customer can immediately start reviewing the site.
I left Wordpress and moved to Jekyll and it was hard. You install Wordpress as an app. Jekyll is more of a framework. You have to build the site from scratch (or find themes) and add program what you want. You can always start with the default Minima theme that Jekyll ships with and modify it.
After your dev machine is set up locally, you can check out my videos here and they will get you up and running:
From there, if you want to keep learning you can link to my YouTube channel and find tons of content I created during my journey setting up Jekyll for my site. Of course this Jekyll Talk forum and super helpful.
Hope this helps as a more generic overview and did not interrupt the discussion too much.
Hi BillRaymond,
thanks a lot for your helpfull words. Nevertheless I an stuck in the very beginning. Please look at this messages from the commandline. That does not make any sense. I installed ruby, ruby gem, jekyy and bundler and I have error messages.
Look here:
Raphaels-MacBook-Pro:~ raphaelbolius$ ruby -v
ruby 2.7.2p137 (2020-10-01 revision 5445e04352) [x86_64-darwin17]
Raphaels-MacBook-Pro:~ raphaelbolius$ gem -v
3.1.4
Raphaels-MacBook-Pro:~ raphaelbolius$ gem install jekyll bundler
Successfully installed jekyll-4.1.1
Parsing documentation for jekyll-4.1.1
Done installing documentation for jekyll after 2 seconds
Successfully installed bundler-2.1.4
Parsing documentation for bundler-2.1.4
Done installing documentation for bundler after 4 seconds
2 gems installed
Raphaels-MacBook-Pro:~ raphaelbolius$ jekyll -v
-bash: jekyll: command not found
Raphaels-MacBook-Pro:~ raphaelbolius$
Hi @rabo. I’m sorry you had to go through this. If you’re still stuck, I’m pretty sure I know exactly what the problem is as I have seen people get confused when trying to install Ruby gems over and over again. From your latest terminal output, I see that you are using the bash shell, and so any export PATH commands need to be added to your ~/.bash_profile, not ~/.zshrc, and definitely not ~/.bashrc because it doesn’t get read on a Mac.
I’m also guessing that you installed Ruby via Homebrew, and unfortunately, the Jekyll installation instructions are missing a very important step, which is to update the PATH with the Homebrew gems location. All the other gem paths mentioned in the other replies are not going to have any effect if you installed Ruby with Homebrew.
Here are 2 options to get everything working:
Use my script, which will automatically set everything up for you: https://github.com/monfresh/laptop
Make sure to quit and restart Terminal after you see “All done!” when the script is finished running.
Attempt to fix things manually:
First, run open ~/.bash_profile
This will open the file in TextEdit
Look for any lines that look like export PATH="/usr/local/opt/ruby/bin:$PATH. It looks like you might have 2 of those.
Remove them and replace them with this:
That supports installs to your users ~/.gem/ dir such as:
gem install bundler --user-install
And that works well with the Homebrew setup.
I’d be cautious about running the suggested script that sets things up for you as you won’t know what steps were actually done and how to change or debug things.
This gist I have covers setting up Ruby, Bundler and Jekyll on mac starting with no paths or Ruby installed and contains the essential steps needed to get running. I hope it serves you well.
You can also add this part as suggested by @monfresh
I can tell he is using bash from this line in the output he pasted:
-bash: jekyll: command not found
I can also see that he already has /usr/local/opt/ruby/bin in his PATH, twice even.
@MichaelCurrin Your last statement about sudo being required to install gems is not correct in this scenario. When you install Homebrew, it prompts you for your macOS password, which allows it to automatically change the permissions of /usr/local so that you can install tools with Homebrew.
Once Ruby is installed with Homebrew, in order to install gems (without any flags) and be able to use them, you need both the location of the Homebrew Ruby and the location of the directory where Homebrew installs gems. So, you need both of these in the PATH:
I have tested Ruby installation on Mac extensively over the past 8 years. I keep a spare laptop to test things every time a new macOS is released.
I don’t think we should be confusing beginners with the --user-install option. Most Ruby gems don’t mention that flag in their installation instructions, and so when people type gem install jekyll, or gem install rails, they expect to be able to use the jekyll and rails commands, which requires that their PATH is configured with the gems location that corresponds with their Ruby installation.
I believe in making things as simple as possible for people, which is why I wrote my script, to make it as painless as possible. Discourse, the Ruby app that powers this Jekyll Forum, also provides a script for easy installation: https://meta.discourse.org/t/beginners-guide-to-install-discourse-on-macos-for-development/15772. I wish more Ruby projects would make things easier for beginners.