In this tutorial, we will show you how to install and configure Jekyll on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS server. For those of you who didn’t know, Jekyll is a static site generator with a templating system that can be adapted for many types of websites, including blogs. It can be run on a server, or run locally and the generated files are uploaded to a server. It is the default software used by GitHub Pages.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of Jekyll on a Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) server.
Prerequisites
- A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus).
- It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
- SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
- A
non-root sudo useror access to theroot user. We recommend acting as anon-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.
Install Jekyll on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt-get commands in the terminal.
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade
Step 2. Installing Ruby.
You need to install ruby using the following command:
sudo apt-get install ruby-full
Step 3. Installing Jekyll.
Install Jekyll package using gem:
gem install jekyll
We can test that Jekyll is working by checking the version installed:
jekyll -v
Step 4. Create a blog and up the server using Jekyll.
Now we are ready to create the blog and run the server. The below-given command creates the directory called idrootblog. You can give another name of your choice. In this directory, the Jekyll configuration file and setup are all set:
cd /home jekyll new idrootblog
Change to the newly created directory idrootblog or the new name which you have given at the time of using command Jekyll:
cd idrootblog
Start the Jekyll application and replace the below-mentioned IP address with your IP:
jekyll server --host 192.168.77.21 &
Step 5. Accessing Jekyll.
Jekyll will be available on HTTP port 4000 by default. Open your favorite browser and navigate to http://your-domain.com:4000 or http://server-ip-address:4000/
Congratulations! You have successfully installed Jekyll. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing Jekyll on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official Jekyll website.