Creating a Jekyll site usually involves the following, once jekyll is installed.

1. Set up the basic structure of the site
2. Create some posts, or import them from your previous platform
3. Run your site locally to see how it looks
4. Deploy your site

Basic Structure

Jekyll at its core is a text transformation engine. The concept behind the system is this: you give it text written in your favorite markup language, be that Markdown, Textile, or just plain HTML, and it churns that through a layout or series of layout files. Throughout that process you can tweak how you want the site URLs to look, what data gets displayed on the layout and more. This is all done through strictly editing files, and the web interface is the final product.

A basic Jekyll site usually looks something like this:

.
|-- _config.yml
|-- _layouts
|   |-- default.html
|   `-- post.html
|-- _posts
|   |-- 2007-10-29-why-every-programmer-should-play-nethack.textile
|   `-- 2009-04-26-barcamp-boston-4-roundup.textile
|-- _site
`-- index.html

An overview of what each of these does:

_config.yml

Stores configuration data. A majority of these options can be specified from the command line exectuable but it’s easier to throw them in here so you don’t have to remember them.

_layouts

These are the templates which posts are inserted into. Layouts are defined on a post-by-post basis in the YAML front matter, which is described in the next section. The liquid tag {{ content }} is used to inject data onto the page.

_posts

Your dynamic content, so to speak. The format of these files is important, as named as YEAR-MONTH-DATE-title.MARKUP. The Permalinks can be adjusted very flexibly for each post, but the date and markup language are determined solely by the file name.

_site

This is where the generated site will be placed once Jekyll is done transforming it. It’s probably a good idea to add this to your .gitignore file.

index.html

Granted that this file has a YAML Front Matter section, it will be transformed by Jekyll. The same will happen for any .html, .markdown, or .textile file in your site’s root directory.

Other Files/Folders

Every other directory and file except for those listed above will be transferred over as expected. For example, you could have a css folder, a favicon.ico, etc, etc. There’s plenty of sites already using Jekyll if you’re curious as to how they’re laid out.

Running Jekyll

Usually this is done through the jekyll executable, which is installed with the gem. In order to get a server up and running with your Jekyll site, run:

jekyll --server

and then browse to https://0.0.0.0:4000. There’s plenty of configuration options available to you as well.

Deployment

Since Jekyll simply generates a folder filled with HTML files, it can be served using practically any available web server out there. Please check the Deployment page for more information regarding specific scenarios.