I have just begun to use Jekyll.
I have it working locally with math equation display using mathjax.
It works great, I am sure this is the way to go to have a simple and versatile system to create my personal page about geotechnics.
Being GitHub pages an easy way to go online I have given it a try.
But I have found some drawbacks and concerns, I am not sure if due to my inexperience or they are real limitations of GitHub pages.
Here is the list I have found, feel free to comment about them and if you know some advice to circunvent some of them, please let me know.
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Cannot use own certificate.
I want to use my own fomain name. You can do it using a cname. But nowadays https is a must, and if you activate https, you cannot install your own certificates, at least I could not find how to do it. So you receive certificate errors from web nav when you access the site. -
It is not compatible with all Jekyll themes.
There are some official Jekyll themes in GitHub pages. But I don’t have the time and soul to test many of them to see if they fit my needs. I have found a theme with scrolling interface Prologue that I have liked. It seems simple and easy to modified. I have changed it to adapt it to my needs providing multiple collection support, mathjax integrations and other minor changes.
But GitHub pages complains about the theme sending emails each time I change a file telling me that my theme is not compatible with GitHub pages. It seems to work OK, but it does not display latex equations, even it does locally. -
Privacy.
Even most of my content would be public, I don’t want some of the source files to be displayed to the public. I would like to make a private section to keep some information (personal notes) only for me.
If you use a free public repository everybody can see any part of your Jekyll site (httaccess files). -
Math equations.
I need maths in my notes and documents. I have modified my theme to include a section in the header to insert mathjax.js code and render latex equations.
It works locally but in the online GitHub pages version equations are not rendered.
I like GitHub because it is easy to upload your site using atom or their GitHub desktop program, keep it in sync and easy to use.
Due to this limitations I am thinking to abandone GitHub pages and use my own server.
Is there a way to circunvent them?