Hello World

Table of Contents

• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Getting started with Jekyll on a Windows system
  • Octopress usage
• References
• Testing syntax highlighting

Introduction

Well, here we are. It’s been a rocky road getting this all figured out, but I think we’re finally there.

Installing Jekyll with the Skinny Bones theme is actually quite simple, even on Windows.

Getting started with Jekyll on a Windows system

1. Create a GitHub repository. Name it according to your username: username.github.io. This will also be the URL of your blog.
2. Clone your new repository to your working machine using Git.
3. Download the Skinny Bones theme and extract it to your newly-cloned Git repo. It may overwrite the readme.md file, which is fine.
4. Install Ruby
   1. Download the latest build of the RubyInstaller project and install.
   2. Grab the latest version of the Development Kit from the same page and extract (to a path without spaces).
   3. In a command prompt, navigate to the extracted folder: cd C:\RubyDevKit
   4. Auto-detect Ruby installations and add them to a configuration file: ruby dk.rb init
      • On some 64-bit systems, this will come back and complain that no versions of Ruby were detected. If so, check out [a related StackOverflow question]. You’ll basically need to edit the script to add an extra Registry location to the locations it checks and re-run the script.
   5. Install (register) the DevKit: ruby dk.rb install
5. Download and install the latest Python 2.7 installer.
   • Note that Python 3 is not compatible with Jekyll and Pygments at this time, so don’t download that one.
6. Back in a console window, install Bundler for Ruby: gem install bundler
7. Still in the console, navigate to the directory where the Skinny Bones theme was extracted (your repo for the blog).
8. Run bundle install to install all needed dependencies. This will install Jekyll and Octopress.
9. Edit the _config.yml file. You’ll need to customize the url of the blog, and anything else that looks interesting.
10. Edit the _data\navigation.yml file. This is the navigation header that will appear at the top of your blog.
11. Commit your changes and push back to GitHub.

Octopress usage

You can see a full list of Octopress commands at its official GitHub page.

Here are some of the more commonly-used Octopress commands:

octopress new draft "My New Post"                        # Creates a new draft with the post template

octopress publish "My New Post"                          # Publishes the draft we just created

octopress unpublish "My New Post"                        # Moves the post back to draft status

References

Jekyll by default uses Kramdown markup.

Here’s a GitHub markdown cheatsheet that I found to be rather useful.

Testing syntax highlighting

Here’s some PowerShell code to play with.

# This is a comment
$rand = Get-Random -Min 1 -Max 10
if ($rand -gt 5)
{
    Write-Output "My random number is greater than 5!"
} else {
    Write-Output "My random number is 5 or less."
}

$props = @{
    Number = $rand;
    String = "A string";
}

Write-Output (New-Object -TypeName PSObject -Property $props)