Trying to understand how jekyll works

Question

I have a website that is written in another framework, but it is a site that can be converting into a static site I'm thinking.

It has categories, and content associated to categories.

Would jekyll be a good candidate for this? My site has basically a simple template.

does it also have a concept of categories?

Does it re-generate lists also?

I wish there was a step by step tutorial on how it is used.

Answer 1

does it also have a concept of categories?

Yes, you can include categories in posts in Jekyll.

Does it re-generate lists also?

Do you mean, re-generate the list of posts in a category? Jekyll does expose a site.categories variable which contains the site's categories and all posts in each category, but you'll have to create your own template for outputting this data.

Answer 2

There's a wiki entry showing how Jekyll works and you can find it here. I wrote it, so if you have any questions, please do ask. Also, be aware that this is meant for version 0.12.1, which isn't compatible with 1.0.0.beta2.

Does it also have a concept of categories? Does it re-generate lists also?

Yes, it has the both the concept of categories and tags. It can generate lists of basically everything you want -- blog posts from the whole site, from categories, from tags, from specific dates or range of dates, etc. You just need to use the Liquid tags correctly.

I wish there was a step by step tutorial on how it is used.

There this simple guide in the wiki. Also, you can read Building Static Sites with Jekyll and an introduction from Jekyll Boostrap.