You’ll find all posts in the _posts directory. Jekyll requires blog post files to be named according to this format:

YEAR-MONTH-DAY-title.MARKUP

Where YEAR is a four-digit number, MONTH and DAY are both two-digit numbers, and MARKUP is the file extension (md or markdown). After that, include the necessary front matter — a YAML block at the top of the file between triple-dashes.

Why Jekyll?

Jekyll is a static site generator — it takes your Markdown files and transforms them into a complete, deployable website. Because the output is pure HTML/CSS/JS, it can be hosted for free on GitHub Pages.

Key advantages:

  • Zero server costs — GitHub Pages hosts static files for free
  • Fast — no database queries, no backend rendering
  • Version controlled — your entire site, content and all, lives in Git
  • Markdown-first — write content naturally, not in a CMS

Front Matter

Every post starts with YAML front matter between --- delimiters:

---
layout: post
title: "My Post Title"
date: 2025-04-09 00:00:00 +0530
tags: [jekyll, web, tutorial]
featured: true
excerpt: "A short summary shown on the blog list page."
---

The featured: true flag causes the post to appear in the Featured section at the top of the blog list.

Code Highlighting

Jekyll supports syntax highlighting out of the box using Liquid tags:

def greet(name)
  puts "Hello, #{name}! Welcome to Jekyll."
end
greet('Saddam')
#=> Hello, Saddam! Welcome to Jekyll.

Or with standard Markdown fenced code blocks:

const experience = (start) => {
  const months = (new Date() - new Date(start)) / (1000 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 30.44);
  return `${Math.floor(months / 12)}.${String(Math.round(months % 12)).padStart(2, '0')} years`;
};
console.log(experience('2020-02-24'));

Next Steps