Why use Jekyll

by Erçetin Güler

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Posted on January 08, 2016

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70% of today’s WordPress installations are vulnerable to known exploits (and WordPress powers more than 25% of the web). WordPress is used by 58.8% of all the websites whose content management system we know.

70% of today’s WordPress installations are vulnerable to known exploits (and WordPress powers more than 25% of the web). WordPress is used by 58.8% of all the websites whose content management system we know. This is 25.4% of all websites

We pay a huge price for the underlying complexity of dynamic code running on a server for every request — a price we could avoid paying entirely when this kind of complexity is not needed.

Avoid common WP problems like:

• My blog loading slowly.
• My blog crashing during peak periods.
• My blog becoming infected with malware.

To some degree, we tend to work around this by caching. No high-profile WordPress website would be capable of running without a plugin such as WP Super Cache. Large websites no doubt rely on proxy caches such as Varnish, Nginx and Apache Traffic Server in front of their websites. Caching is notoriously difficult to get right, however, and even the most optimized dynamic website will normally be many times slower than a static solution.

Just a blogging platform.

WordPress is basically a content management framework. It can do just about everything and, if that’s what you’re looking for, then stick with it. I haven’t got a vendetta against WordPress. It’s great software. It’s just evolved beyond its roots and beyond what I (and many other people) need.

To some, this focus will be limiting, but if you only want to run a blog, then:

• Jekyll has everything you need and nothing that you don’t. You won’t be bogged down in options and insignifcant choices, but you also won’t lack the features you need most.
• The writing experience is unparalleled. Because your content is built with Markdown files, you can use whatever text editor you prefer. Personally, I use Sublime Text, but any other option is fine. Your preference wins.
• There’s less chance of anything breaking. This is partly because of Jekyll’s small scope allowing for a considerable amount of polish, but also because you’re not dealing with finnicky server-side software.

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