At some point our old layout grew up and decided to move out. And even though the separation was difficult, it was also time. Even when you've walked a long path together, sometimes change is also a gain.

But the biggest problem wasn't the layout itself - the content and technology were already outdated and couldn't keep up with the new https:// protocol. Additionally, the site was still based on our old self-developed PHP framework, which still worked well but required regular adaptation to current PHP versions. An effort that made little sense for a then-static website.

The new website was instead developed with Jekyll. A Ruby-based framework that provides unbeatable and proven help in generating static websites. Jekyll allows, like our PHP framework, separation of layout and content, but then generates static HTML pages that can be placed directly on the web server and load much faster.

Through the use of Liquid template syntax, layout elements can be broken down into reusable components and parameterized. This enormously simplifies global adjustments to the layout and modifying individual reused elements, since you no longer have to change all occurrences but only the common template. For the CSS stylesheets we used Sass, which also makes editing CSS syntax considerably easier through nesting, variables and includes.

And probably the biggest relief in maintaining and updating content is that the content itself is written in pure Markdown, which makes texts much easier to maintain since they are free of HTML and CSS markup.

You can learn more about how Jekyll works in the Jekyll documentation. The source code, issues and further information can be found on the Jekyll GitHub repo. And the Jekyll Talk website can help with further questions.

So don't hesitate and create a static website with Jekyll yourself!

Of course there are plenty of other static website generators, but Jekyll has been on the market the longest and enjoys a large community and correspondingly many extensions. There will surely be something to read about the other younger candidates here soon too.

Thank you very much for reading this article to the end, and for not falling asleep!