I started out following the quick-start guide on Jekyll docs:

$ gem install jekyll
$ jekyll new
$ jekyll serve

As I read further through the docs and admired my new creation, I quickly realised I was going to be making a lot of changes to the default set-up, even for the simple site I had in mind. After copying over the layout files from the minima gem to my site folder, I set about pruning code, poking around, and observing how everything is put together.

I’m still learning! Parts of it feel familiar. Jekyll uses Liquid syntax, which feels familiar after using Django at my last job. It’s far more powerful than I need for a site this simple, but it’s fun to have a sandbox to play around in.

However, I’ve only just realised that Liquid is part of the Shopify family. I don’t have much experience with Shopify; all I know of them is that they provide the platform for most of the revenue to America’s fascist media outlet… so now I feel much less great about how I spent my Saturday afternoon. 😕