--- 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](http://wiki.shopify.com/Liquid) 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](http://pages.github.com), which means you can use Jekyll to host your project’s page, blog, or website from GitHub’s servers **for free**.