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Basic Usage

The Jekyll gem makes a jekyll executable available to you in your Terminal window. You can use this command in a number of ways:

jekyll build
# => The current folder will be generated into ./_site

jekyll build --destination <destination>
# => The current folder will be generated into <destination>

jekyll build --source <source> --destination <destination>
# => The <source> folder will be generated into <destination>

jekyll build --watch
# => The current folder will be generated into ./_site,
#    watched for changes, and regenerated automatically.

Override default development settings

Default URL is set to http://localhost:4000 in development environment. 3.3.0

If you want to build for your production environment:

  • Set your production URL in _config.yml e.g. url: https://example.com.
  • Run JEKYLL_ENV=production bundle exec jekyll build.
Changes to _config.yml are not included during automatic regeneration.

The _config.yml master configuration file contains global configurations and variable definitions that are read once at execution time. Changes made to _config.yml during automatic regeneration are not loaded until the next execution.

Note Data Files are included and reloaded during automatic regeneration.

Destination folders are cleaned on site builds

The contents of <destination> are automatically cleaned, by default, when the site is built. Files or folders that are not created by your site will be removed. Files and folders you wish to retain in <destination> may be specified within the <keep_files> configuration directive.

Do not use an important location for <destination>; instead, use it as a staging area and copy files from there to your web server.

Jekyll also comes with a built-in development server that will allow you to preview what the generated site will look like in your browser locally.

jekyll serve
# => A development server will run at http://localhost:4000/
# Auto-regeneration: enabled. Use `--no-watch` to disable.

jekyll serve --livereload
# LiveReload refreshes your browser after a change.

jekyll serve --incremental
# Incremental will perform a partial build in order to reduce regeneration time.

jekyll serve --detach
# => Same as `jekyll serve` but will detach from the current terminal.
#    If you need to kill the server, you can `kill -9 1234` where "1234" is the PID.
#    If you cannot find the PID, then do, `ps aux | grep jekyll` and kill the instance.

jekyll serve --no-watch
# => Same as `jekyll serve` but will not watch for changes.

These are just a few of the available configuration options. Many configuration options can either be specified as flags on the command line, or alternatively (and more commonly) they can be specified in a _config.yml file at the root of the source directory. Jekyll will automatically use the options from this file when run. For example, if you place the following lines in your _config.yml file:

source:      _source
destination: _deploy

Then the following two commands will be equivalent:

jekyll build
jekyll build --source _source --destination _deploy

For more about the possible configuration options, see the configuration page.

Call for help

The help command is always here to remind you of all available options and usage, and also works with the build, serve and new subcommands, e.g jekyll help new or jekyll help build.

If you’re interested in browsing these docs on-the-go, install the jekyll-docs gem and run jekyll docs in your terminal.