A GitHub web-site is like an empty container. A blogging application is needed to transform this empty container into a functional blogging web-site. A blogging application is software that manages the layout, formatting and style of the users blogs on the blogging web-site. In the case of GitHub this blogging software needs to be compatible with Jekyll. This blogs describes installing up this essential blogging software.

The blogging software installed in this web-site is called "Jekyll Now" and is written by Barry Clark. Think of "Jekyll Now" as WordPress for GitHub. Barry has written a fantastic magazine article "Build a Blog with Jekyll and GitHub Pages on how to install his blogging software. This is an excellent article and required reading for setting up a blogging site on GitHub.

Installing "Jekyll Now" Blogging Application in my GitHub Account

Jekyll Now is like WordPress for GitHub- its the essential blogging software for GitHub. The "Jekyll Now" blogging software is stored in Barry Clark's public GitHub account. You need a copy of this software. As a GitHub user it is really easy to copy software between GitHub accounts - it's called making a fork of a repository.

1. To fork Barry's blogging application click on the link Jekyll Now, and hit the “Fork” button in the top-right corner of the repository.
2. My GitHub account now has a new Jekyll Now repository. This is my own personal copy of Barry's blogging software.
3. My GitHub username is patclaffey, this means my personal web-site repository must be called patclaffey.github.io - following GitHubs yourusername.github.io web-site naming convention.
4. I must rename my copy of the Jekyll Now repository to patclaffey.github.io.
   However I already had a repository of this name - so I just renamed the old repository to a different name. This allowed my to successfully rename my Jekyll Now repository to patclaffey.github.io.
5. I opened a browser and entered the url http://patclaffey.github.io. I now had a public blogging web-site. That was really easy. Thanks Barry!!

Installing a local copy of "Jekyll Now" on Windows PC

1. As a GitHub user I already have the git tool installed on my desktop. I cloned the patclaffey.github.io repository to my desktop. Now I had local desktop access to all the pages that comprise my new web-site.
2. I went to the root directory of patclaffey.github.io on my desktop. I ran Jekyll from here, to build the local copy of my web-site by running the following command: bundle exec jekyll server
   I could now access the local desktop copy of my Jekyll web-site at the url http://localhost:4000 on my desktop browser.

Conclusions

It is really easy to install Barry Clark's Blogging Application. This is a great software to get started blogging on GitHub.