Starting a personal blog or a small developer page doesn’t have to be complicated. I recently set up this blog using a free Jekyll theme, and it was much simpler than I expected.
Here’s a quick outline of the steps I followed:
1. Choosing a Theme
I selected the Mediumish Jekyll Theme because it was clean, minimal, and free to use.
You can explore many free themes on GitHub by searching “Jekyll blog theme.”
2. Setting Up the Environment
To get Jekyll working locally on Windows:
- Install Ruby with DevKit
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Install Bundler and Jekyll:
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gem install bundler jekyll -
Clone your theme repo:
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git clone https://github.com/wowthemesnet/mediumish-theme-jekyll.git cd mediumish-theme-jekyll -
Install dependencies:
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bundle install -
Serve your blog locally:
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bundle exec jekyll serve
3. Customizing the Blog
After the setup, I:
- Cleaned the navigation menu to keep it simple: Home, Tech Blog, Projects, About Me
- Deleted demo posts
- Updated the About page
- Added a personal favicon
- Removed the default theme branding (like “Mediumish” footer text)
4. Publishing
I pushed the final version to a GitHub repository named yourusername.github.io, so it gets hosted automatically with GitHub Pages.
It was a fun process.
If you’re looking to start your own site without dealing with heavy CMS platforms, Jekyll is definitely worth a try.