To test your site locally, you’ll need

• ruby
• the github-pages gem

Installing ruby

There are lots of different ways to install ruby.

In Mac OS X, older versions of ruby will already be installed. But I use the Ruby Version Manager (RVM) to have a more recent version. You could also use Homebrew.

In Windows, use RubyInstaller. (In most of this tutorial, I’ve assumed you’re using a Mac or some flavor of Unix. It’s possible that none of this was usable for Windows folks. Sorry!)

Installing the github-pages gem

Run the following command:

gem install github-pages

This will install the github-pages gem and all dependencies (including jekyll).

Later, to update the gem, type:

gem update github-pages

Testing your site locally

To construct and test your site locally, go into the directory and type

jekyll build

This will create (or modify) a _site/ directory, containing everything from assets/, and then the index.md and all pages/*.md files, converted to html. (So there’ll be _site/index.html and the various _site/pages/*.html.)

Type the following in order to “serve” the site. This will first run build, and so it does not need to be preceded by jekyll build.

jekyll serve

Now open your browser and go to http://localhost:4000