Prep

To create your own materials using Lesson Template, please create a free GitHub account if you do not have one already. Basic familiarity with the GitHub web interface will be helpful.

For a quick introduction check out GitHub’s Hello World guide, or the extensive GitHub Learning Lab.

It is possible to create a website with this template using only GitHub’s web interface–in fact, it works great! (Tip: you can click . on any GitHub repository to open the builtin fully featured web editor to work on your project.)

However, for more advanced use you may want to get set up to develop projects on your local computer. You will need Git, Ruby, and Jekyll installed.

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Local Jekyll Setup [very optional]

Install Git

Git is a free, distributed version control system. GitHub is a Git repository hosting service, a place to store and sync your work in the cloud–your Jekyll and GitHub Pages projects will be under Git version control, so you need the software on your machine.

• Windows: install Git for Windows using the default options. This will give you Git, Git Bash, and Git GUI. Git Bash is a great terminal that lets you use UNIX style commands on Windows.
• Mac: check if Git is already installed by opening terminal and typing git --version. If you do not have it, download the official Mac installer.
• Linux: check if Git is already installed by opening terminal and typing git --version. If you do not have it, install from your distribution’s software center or package manager (for Ubuntu sudo apt install git).

If you are interested in using a visual GUI application integrated with GitHub, Windows and Mac users should also install GitHub Desktop using the default options. You can install GitHub Desktop in addition to other versions of Git.

There are other GUI apps available for managing and visualizing Git repositories, including Linux options.

Install Ruby

Ruby is a open source programming language popular with web applications. You do not need to know anything about Ruby, but you do need it to run Jekyll on your system!

Jekyll requires a Ruby version 2.4.0 or greater. Below are quick start steps, but you may want to refer to Jekyll’s official installation guides for tips.

• Windows: Use RubyInstaller for Windows.
  • First, download the suggested stable version “WITH DEVKIT” (as of this writing, Ruby+Devkit 2.7.X (x64)) and double click to install. Use the install defaults, but make sure “Add Ruby executables to your PATH” is checked. On the final step, ensure the box to start the MSYS2 DevKit is checked.
  • Second, the installer will open a terminal window with options to install MSYS2 DevKit components. Choose option 3, “MSYS2 and MINGW development toolchain”, or simply press ENTER to install all the necessary dependencies. The installer will proceed through a bunch of steps outputting a bunch of text in the terminal window. Eventually, this will conclude and you should see a message with the word success in it. If the window doesn’t close, press Enter again or manually close it. (The installer can be restarted by typing ridk install into a command prompt).
• Mac: OS X has a version of Ruby installed by default. Check the version with ruby -v. If it is > 2.4.0 you can use the system Ruby. However, a newer version can be installed using Homebrew, brew install ruby, or a manager such as rbenv or RVM. Check the official Jekyll Mac install docs for tips.
• Linux: Even though the version will not be the most up-to-date, the simplest method is to use your distro’s repositories. For example on Ubuntu, sudo apt install ruby-full. Make sure the repository version is > 2.4.0. You will also need the build tools Make and GCC, on Ubuntu get them with sudo apt install build-essential. For a more up-to-date version, use a manager such as rbenv or RVM.

Install Jekyll

Jekyll is a Gem, a software package installed via Ruby’s management system called RubyGems (similar to Python’s Pip). Open a terminal and type: gem install jekyll bundler

This will take a minute as Gem installs all the dependencies and builds extensions.

Install Text Editor

When working with code you should have a good text editor. Windows notepad does not handle UTF-8 encoding or UNIX line endings that are standard for cross platform applications. For basic editing, Windows Notepad++, Mac TextEdit, or Linux Gedit are sufficient. However, a more complete code editor will be helpful for managing Jekyll projects.

Open-source cross platform suggestions:

• Visual Studio Code
• Atom