1. I decided to create a blog after reading David Robinson’s advice. I had read many times before that I ought to create a blog/portfolio, but somehow this article was the tipping point. I recommend reading it!

  2. I got a basic understanding of Jekyll and Github Pages by following Jonathan McGlone’s guide. It has minimal pre-requisites and is accessible to beginners. I did not follow all the steps, but it was a good starting point. It was easy to get something up and running, and it recommends resources to move forwards.

  3. I followed Jekyll’s’ step-by-step tutorial. This is excellent. It is clear and it builds things up logically. A few minor details:

    • I created a Conda environment in which I installed Ruby and Jekyll.
    • I cloned the GitHub repository from Step 2 into this enviroment, and adapted the steps as appropriate (e.g. copying the CSS from Step 2 into the SASS file).
    • I do not set up ‘authors’, as I am going to be the only author on this blog!

As with most of these things, the upfront cost is high and it requires patience to get through it. But now that I have done it, I am extremely pleased. Having created my personal website using a hodge-podge of HTML, CSS and PHP, I can appreciate how much smoother Jekyll makes everything. It is refreshing.

Goodbye, angled-brackets! You shan’t be missed.