If you're a cool cat like me, you want your own website. Go with NearlyFreeSpeech.NET for your webhost and domain name registrar. It's not required to use their webhosting; there's GitHub. Point to your own GitHub Page: it's free and is beneficial in learning how Jekyll works. You can easily generate a starter theme. Before building my own, I got started with Minimal-Mistakes's remote theme starter to gain a foothold. Beyond education, the theme stands well on its own. I like Katerina Bosko's implementation.

If you're only running GitHub Desktop or use its web interface, you could just add your page/post and stick around for a few minutes for it to render out—there's a soft limit of 10 renders per hour. However, I prefer a little bit more immediacy to see things shape and hence local dev environment.

The setup is a LOT easier on Windows than what the docs indicate. Just grab the installer from here and follow this on JekyllRB.

But, what if you want your own home? Well, bring it on back to NearlyFreeSpeech.

I threw together my own notes on how to create a Jekyll setup (as unoptimized as they are), just so that I have a checklist on hand when I decide to blow away my site for one reason or another! Hey, in my 40s, admittedly, a step or two does slip out the backdoor; it's good to have everything there! There's docs out there on the process, but none (that I can ever find) seem to piece it together with clarity—or includes a truckload of non-essentials.

Jekyll Checklist for NSFN Setup

1. Create a static site on NFSN.

2. Login via SSH.

3. Setup HTTPS: tls-setup.sh

4. JekyllRB.com: Troubleshooting suggests these for NFSN, so let's run them:

   export GEM_HOME=/home/private/gems
   

   export GEM_PATH=/home/private/gems:/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/
   

   export PATH=$PATH:/home/private/gems/bin
   

   export RB_USER_INSTALL='true'
   

5. Install essentials: gem install jekyll bundler

6. Within the private directory, create a folder (content) to hold markdown and site config files.

7. Upload content!

8. Enter that newly-created directory (content) to install GEMs by running: bundle install

9. Stay there and render the content into HTML! For all future updates, do this as well: bundler exec jekyll build --destination /home/public

10. Oh no! Once the shell session ends, the gem location is lost! Fix this for the next session by making .bash_profile and .bashrc files the same (located in private) by editing the .bash_profile:

    if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
       source ~/.bashrc
    fi
    

11. ...and edit .bashrc:

    export RB_USER_INSTALL='true'
    export GEM_HOME=/home/private/gems
    

12. Log in via SSH and run step # 9 as deep longings necessitate while your heart hammers in ecstasy!