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Day 05Friday, January 23, 20262 min read

Blogging with GitHub Pages (Publishing Foundations)

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🎯 Goal

Learn the basics of publishing a blog using GitHub Pages and understand the tooling behind a static site workflow.

✅ What I Did

Learning

Tooling & Setup

  • Installed required dependencies:
    • Ruby (v2.7.0 or higher)
    • RubyGems
    • GCC and Make
  • Experimented with Jekyll locally
  • Used Visual Studio Code to work with the project
  • Created my main GitHub repository
  • Explored the clone workflow to add and manage content via VS Code instead of the GitHub web UI

✅ What Worked

  • GitHub Pages concept is simple once broken down
  • Local Jekyll setup helped demystify how pages are generated
  • VS Code + Git workflow feels more scalable than web editing
  • Seeing local changes reflected remotely clarified the publishing flow

❌ What Didn’t

  • Ruby/Jekyll setup felt brittle and not beginner-friendly
  • Toolchain complexity is high compared to the apparent simplicity of the output
  • Still not fully clear what should be automated vs manual in the workflow

🧠 Key Takeaways

  • GitHub Pages is essentially static files + automation
  • Jekyll abstracts a lot, but adds its own complexity
  • Local-first workflows reduce friction long-term
  • Blogging here is closer to software engineering than traditional blogging

❓ Questions

  • How much Jekyll customization is worth it vs keeping things minimal?
  • At what point does this workflow become overkill?
  • Should content live in the same repo as labs, or be separated?

📚 Resources