I used to be in love with Rails. Coming from PHP, Rails made it so incredibly easy to layout, build and eventually extend websites. But there were also lots of things that made me really uneasy about Rails. Things like:
- Newer versions breaking my website when my host updated their servers (I eventually froze my site so that Rails wouldn't upgrade).
- The fact that I had to depend on my host for Rails support (I know could always buy a slice somewhere, but I really hate server configuration).
- The overall complexity and weight of Rails.
It wasn't until I came to work at Inkling that a coworker, Scott Kyle, introduced me to Jekyll.
Jekyll, for those who don't know, is a static site generator. Using a simple yaml front-matter (and tiny configuration files), Jekyll can infer the structure of your website and generate static html pages that can be served from nearly any server. In other words, it's awesome.
I feel a million times more free with Jekyll than I ever did with Rails...
Read more here.