I was an avid WordPress user before using Jekyll. I love the simplicity of Jekyll and the full control. I thought I would write something to help others with weighing the pros and cons of using Jekyll or WordPress.

Pros of Jekyll

  • Easy to modify - Jekyll is incredibly easy to modify. You only need a little bit of knowledge about liquid. Then you can handle all your own layouts. Compared to modifying WordPress, you need to understand the loop and plugin conflicts.
  • Free Github Hosting - You can setup a repository on Github and they will host the blog for you. This can save you quite a bit of money, while still having complete control of layout, etc.
  • Speed, Security, and Static Content - Jekyll converts your post into static content. This makes it incredibly fast without the need for dynamically creating content. This means better security and no need for local caching.
  • Markdown - Everything in Jekyll is written in Markdown and then converted to HTML, this makes writing posts incredibly fast and not have to deal with the problems when switching from “visual” mode to “html” mode with WordPress.

Cons of Jekyll:

  • Github hosted blogs disable Plugins - This is similar to your WordPress blog being hosted on WordPress.com. For security reasons, WordPress and Github both disable the use of hosted plugins.
  • Github hosted blogs Lack Scheduling - If you host on github, there is no way to schedule a post. This is my biggest gripe with jekyll on github. If you locally host, it is not a problem and can be handled with plugins.

Pros of WordPress:

  • Out of the box SEO - Hands down the best feature of WordPress over Jekyll is it’s default optimization for search engines. It took me a little research to understand how to design the jekyll layout for SEO, but I enjoy learning these things.
  • Plugin Database - The shear amount of plugins available for WordPress is incredible. When you have an idea for an addition to your blog, it is incredibly easy to find someone who has already developed something that you can benefit from.
  • Under the Covers - WordPress handles a lot of the things for you automatically. Tagging, categories, pagination, etc.

Cons of WordPress:

  • Under the Covers - An advantage can be a double edged sword. In this case one of Wordpress’ strengths is also it’s weakness. Since much of WordPress is handled for you, you don’t learn why things are important. This may also be a pro for you. It depends on if you are like me and what to always be learning.
  • Slow - WordPress is incredibly slow. Sometimes you just want to write a post and post it. In WordPress, you login, wait for everything to load, and then write your article. With Jekyll this is not an issue, everything is written locally and then pushed.

Hopefully this gives you a good breakdown of both technologies and helps you decide which technology to use for your blog. Do you have other pros or cons about using WordPress or Jekyll? I would love to know more. Leave a comment so others can benefit.

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