It’s 5 years since I said Hello World with my first blog post using the free GitHub Pages. In the meantime it’s become much easier to create a blog like this, and it still costs nothing so long as you stay within the generous size and usage limits.

Blog roll

You’re allowed one website or blog associated with your GitHub account - like this blog which is hosted at https://gdunlop.github.io.

But that’s not all - you can also publish a website or blog from any repository you create - all at no cost. For example I write other blogs including this one about Budget Boating.

Static cling

Blogs often require some sort of dynamic website, with articles served up from a database. This makes hosting more involved as dynamic sites place more requirements on hosting infrastructure.

That’s where Jekyll comes in. This tool generates a static website every time you add new content. This means it is just a collection of HTML pages and resources - nothing fancy - so it is very easy to host.

However you don’t need to worry about hosting as that’s all done by Pages, for free. Since Jekyll is fully integrated within Pages there is hardly any set-up involved, it just works.

Useful articles

There are many articles covering how to create and host a blog using GitHub Pages and Jekyll.

Here are a couple to get you started:-

• Setting up a GitHub Pages site with Jekyll
• Creating and hosting a personal site on GitHub
• Create your blog for free

Happy blogging.