---
  slug: so-what-is-jekyll-exactly
  layout: slide
---

Jekyll is a simple, blog-aware, static site generator. It takes a template
directory containing raw text files in various formats, runs it through
[Markdown](http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/) (or
[Textile](http://redcloth.org/textile)) and
[Liquid](https://help.shopify.com/themes/liquid/basics)
converters, and spits out a complete, ready-to-publish static website suitable
for serving with your favorite web server. Jekyll also happens to be the engine
behind [GitHub Pages](https://pages.github.com/), which means you can use Jekyll
to host your project’s page, blog, or website from GitHub’s servers **for
free**.