This blog is published using Jekyll and GitHub pages so I wanted to share my experience with it.

First the good:

  • The price is right. Thank you GitHub for free hosting. Yes, you can run a free Wordpress site on wordpress.com but last time I tried it you could not install your own themes or plugins.
  • Do you really the extra overhead of Wordpress (MySQL DB, web server, etc) and 5K plugins (which can slow down your site)? I just want simple HTML content out there.
  • Scalabilty and reliability. No platform is 100% reliable but I trust GitHub more than some $5/month Wordpress hosting site.
  • Content back up and revision history are dead simple with git pull. I have a copy of this blog on my laptop and on my home desktop. With Wordpress I have to backup content in DB separately from the custom themes.
  • Ability to move my site. If tomorrow I do not like GitHub I can easily switch to AWS S3 or another solution.

Now the not so good:

  • No WYSIWYG. Markdown is better than writing raw HTML but still.
  • This a tool for techies. I don’t think marketing or sales folks would be comfortable with Liquid templates and git commands.
  • I wish there was a simpler way to install and switch themes (this is where Wordpress is better).
  • Since your site is static HTML it limits your ability to integrate things like search or ability for users to login.
  • Wordpress is a powerful CMS which gives you ability to drag and drop widgets around your screen, customizing your pages look & feel.

But overall I have been really enjoying using Jekyll / GitHub for blogging and plan to continue using it for now.