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Jekyll vs WordPress: What are the differences?
Developers describe Jekyll as "Blog-aware, static site generator in Ruby". Think of Jekyll as a file-based CMS, without all the complexity. Jekyll takes your content, renders Markdown and Liquid templates, and spits out a complete, static website ready to be served by Apache, Nginx or another web server. Jekyll is the engine behind GitHub Pages, which you can use to host sites right from your GitHub repositories. On the other hand, WordPress is detailed as "A semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability". The core software is built by hundreds of community volunteers, and when you’re ready for more there are thousands of plugins and themes available to transform your site into almost anything you can imagine. Over 60 million people have chosen WordPress to power the place on the web they call “home” — we’d love you to join the family.
Jekyll and WordPress are primarily classified as "Static Site Generators" and "Self-Hosted Blogging / CMS" tools respectively.
Some of the features offered by Jekyll are:
- Simple - No more databases, comment moderation, or pesky updates to install—just your content.
- Static - Markdown (or Textile), Liquid, HTML & CSS go in. Static sites come out ready for deployment.
- Blog-aware - Permalinks, categories, pages, posts, and custom layouts are all first-class citizens here.
On the other hand, WordPress provides the following key features:
- Flexibility
- Publishing Tools
- User Management
"Github pages integration" is the top reason why over 65 developers like Jekyll, while over 397 developers mention "Customizable" as the leading cause for choosing WordPress.
Jekyll and WordPress are both open source tools. It seems that Jekyll with 38.1K GitHub stars and 8.31K forks on GitHub has more adoption than WordPress with 12.6K GitHub stars and 7.69K GitHub forks.
Stack Exchange, ebay, and LinkedIn are some of the popular companies that use WordPress, whereas Jekyll is used by Sentry, New Relic, and Tilt. WordPress has a broader approval, being mentioned in 5305 company stacks & 1389 developers stacks; compared to Jekyll, which is listed in 111 company stacks and 125 developer stacks.
As a Frontend Developer I wanted something simple to generate static websites with technology I am familiar with. GatsbyJS was in the stack I am familiar with, does not need any other languages / package managers and allows quick content deployment in pure HTML
or Markdown
(what you prefer for a project). It also does not require you to understand a theming engine if you need a custom design.
So many choices for CMSs these days. So then what do you choose if speed, security and customization are key? Headless for one. Consuming your own APIs for content is absolute key. It makes designing pages in the front-end a breeze. Leaving Ghost and Cockpit. If I then looked at the footprint and impact on server load, Cockpit definitely wins that battle.
10 Years ago I have started to check more about the online sphere and I have decided to make a website. There were a few CMS available at that time like WordPress or Joomla that you can use to have your website. At that point, I have decided to use WordPress as it was the easiest and I am glad I have made a good decision. Now WordPress is the most used CMS. Later I have created also a site about WordPress: https://www.wpdoze.com
I've heard that I have the ability to write well, at times. When it flows, it flows. I decided to start blogging in 2013 on Blogger. I started a company and joined BizPark with the Microsoft Azure allotment. I created a WordPress blog and did a migration at some point. A lot happened in the time after that migration but I stopped coding and changed cities during tumultuous times that taught me many lessons concerning mental health and productivity. I eventually graduated from BizSpark and outgrew the credit allotment. That killed the WordPress blog.
I blogged about writing again on the existing Blogger blog but it didn't feel right. I looked at a few options where I wouldn't have to worry about hosting cost indefinitely and Jekyll stood out with GitHub Pages. The Importer was fairly straightforward for the existing blog posts.
Todo * Set up redirects for all posts on blogger. The URI format is different so a complete redirect wouldn't work. Although, there may be something in Jekyll that could manage the redirects. I did notice the old URLs were stored in the front matter. I'm working on a command-line Ruby gem for the current plan. * I did find some of the lost WordPress posts on archive.org that I downloaded with the waybackmachinedownloader. I think I might write an importer for that. * I still have a few Disqus comment threads to map
Pros of Jekyll
- Github pages integration74
- Open source54
- It's slick, customisable and hackerish37
- Easy to deploy24
- Straightforward cms for the hacker mindset23
- Gitlab pages integration7
- Best for blogging5
- Low maintenance2
- Easy to integrate localization2
- Huge plugins ecosystem1
- Authoring freedom and simplicity1
Pros of WordPress
- Customizable413
- Easy to manage364
- Plugins & themes352
- Non-tech colleagues can update website content258
- Really powerful246
- Rapid website development144
- Best documentation77
- Codex51
- Product feature set44
- Custom/internal social network35
- Open source16
- Great for all types of websites8
- Huge install and user base6
- I like it like I like a kick in the groin5
- It's simple and easy to use by any novice5
- Perfect example of user collaboration5
- Open Source Community5
- Most websites make use of it5
- Best5
- Community4
- API-based CMS4
- Easy To use3
- <a href="https://secure.wphackedhel">Easy Beginner</a>2
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Cons of Jekyll
- Build time increases exponentially as site grows4
- Lack of developments lately2
- Og doesn't work with postings dynamically1
Cons of WordPress
- Plugins are of mixed quality12
- Hard to keep up-to-date if you customize things12
- Not best backend UI9
- Complex Organization2
- Great Security1