Jekyll: What is the difference between Jekyll and Jekyll bootstrap?

Question

I'm confused at the relationship between jekyll and jekyll bootstrap. I'd like to start a blog and I'm not really sure which site to use for tutorials and whatnot.

Marijane

Answer 1

Jekyll is the main thing. It's what generates your markdown and templates into static html pages.

Jekyll Bootstrap is just a project that helps you make Jekyll sites faster/better. It uses Twitter Bootstrap, which you could totally do on your own.

And it's got stuff like rake tasks to make it easier to create new posts, and pages. For example, you can create a new post like this: rake post title="Hello World".

Unfortunately, Jekyll Bootstrap is no longer maintained because the author created his own static site generator.

I would just start with plain Jekyll if I were you, but there are probably some great ideas you can take from Jekyll Bootstrap. For instance, if you like Twitter Bootstrap, it's a great idea to include that in your site. Also, those rake tasks could be handy. It can be a pain creating new posts since the filename required by Jekyll is _posts/YYY-MM-DD-slug-of-the-post.md.

Cox

It's worth noting you can still use Bootstrap with Jekyll, its just that Jekyll Bootstrap makes some things more integrated – Judsonjudus

Yep. That's why I said "which you could totally do on your own." – Cox

This is not a very clear answer to the question. Also, it is very opinionated. – Polynesia

@JoostS Thanks for that comment. Your answer is definitely better. – Cox

Answer 2

Jekyll is a static site generator.

Twitter Bootstrap is a HTML/CSS/JS framework that allows you to quickly create the most common GUI elements in your browser, like menu bars, tabs, buttons, etc.

Jekyll Bootstrap is a collection of turn-key Jekyll themes for Github pages, which are all based on the Twitter Bootstrap framework.

Note that Jekyll Bootstrap is no longer maintained. Therefore, these themes might not work as expected, because Github periodically upgrades their Jekyll version.

Polynesia

Answer 3

Jekyll is a compiler like for C++ or VB.NET. Jekyll-bootstrap is a open source project with Hello World website made using twitter bootstrap library (this is jquery library to make site responsive - adjust to screen size).

Now you can have your own site structure and use twitter bootstrap in any jekyll post or page as shown here. So don't go for 3rd party project where you've to spent time digging into code.

Jakie