A Feature Rich Static Blog

February 14, 2016

Once I decided to get back to blogging, I looked for a blogging platform that will deliver an incredible user experience for my readers. As I'm a huge fan of static generators, I naturally searched for a static blogging solution that suits me.

Jekyll was an easy choice there's a few things I don't like about it.

First, it's a bit slow. When running jekyll --server, the entire site is rebuilt, and it takes forever. But it looks like they are implementing --incremental builds.

Then there's no built-in PageSpeed optimizations. And as I performance maniac, I want my assets to be concenated and minified.

And last but not least, there's no built-in comments or newsletter integration. I want my visitors to interact with my blog: comment, subscribe or drop me an email.

Adding comments to my Jekyll blog

There's a few options out there for letting your visitors comment on your Jekyll blog.

Personally, I really like Disqus commments because I'm personnally not confident in posting comments via Facebook. So let's get our hands dirty and see how easy it is to implement Disqus on Jekyll.

Adding a newsletter subscription form

Adding a contact form to your Jekyll site

  • Contact form using Formspree.io