Is Switching from WordPress or Blogger to Jekyll Worth It
Why Do People Switch from Blogger or WordPress to Jekyll?
At first glance, switching from an easy platform like WordPress or Blogger to something like Jekyll may seem strange—why give up your visual dashboard for folders and files?
But more and more bloggers are making the move. Why? Because Jekyll offers:
- Speed – no database, no heavy plugins
- Security – no login forms to attack
- Freedom – full control over structure and content
- Free hosting – GitHub Pages has zero hosting fees
What Will You Miss When Leaving WordPress or Blogger?
✅ Things You Might Miss:
Visual editor with toolbar (bold, italic, etc.)
One-click plugin installation
Drag-and-drop widgets
Built-in analytics
But Here’s the Tradeoff:
You’ll never worry about plugin conflicts again
You control exactly what’s on your page—no bloat
You don’t need to update a dashboard every month
Jekyll strips things down to the essentials: just your content and your layout.
What Stays the Same When You Switch?
Despite the differences, some things remain familiar:
You still write blog posts
You still categorize content
You still manage pages like “About” and “Contact”
The difference is in how you do it—Jekyll uses Markdown files instead of forms or editors.
What Does a Blog Post Look Like in Jekyll?
Here’s a Jekyll post:
---
layout: post
title: "My First Jekyll Post"
date: 2025-07-04
categories: [blog]
---
Hello, this is my first post after switching from WordPress!
Compare that to writing in WordPress: same content, just a different format. Jekyll uses text files—you don’t need an internet connection or browser to write.
How to Handle Images in Jekyll?
In WordPress, you click “Upload” and the image is stored in the media library.
In Jekyll, you simply place your image inside the assets/img folder, and insert it like this:
It’s manual, yes—but also simple and predictable.
How About SEO?
Jekyll gives you full control. You can define your metadata directly in each post using front matter:
---
layout: post
title: "Best SEO Practices"
description: "A guide to optimizing your Jekyll blog for Google."
categories: [seo]
---You can even add custom canonical tags, Open Graph data, and JSON-LD if needed—all in your layout files.
Is It Hard to Migrate Old Content?
If you're on Blogger, you can export your content to XML and convert it using online tools like ExitWP or Jekyll Exporter (for WordPress).
The result will be a set of Markdown files with front matter. You can clean them up and drop them into the _posts/ folder.
What About the Homepage?
In WordPress, it’s set through the Settings panel.
In Jekyll, your homepage is the index.html file. It usually contains a loop like this:
{% for post in site.posts %}
<h2><a href="{{ post.url }}">{{ post.title }}</a></h2>
{% endfor %}You don’t need to understand this right away—it comes with your theme, and it “just works.”
Should You Switch?
Ask yourself:
Do you value control over convenience?
Do you want a fast, secure site?
Are you okay with writing in text editors instead of visual dashboards?
If yes, then Jekyll might be exactly what you’ve been looking for.
Final Thoughts
Switching from Blogger or WordPress to Jekyll may feel like a step backward at first. You lose the buttons, dashboards, and helpers. But what you gain is clarity, speed, control, and simplicity.
It’s like going from a car with too many buttons to a bike: no distractions, just you and the road. And once you learn to ride it, you'll never want to go back.
Take it one post at a time. Start small. You don’t need to migrate your whole blog overnight. Write one article in Markdown, push it to GitHub, and see your static blog live. Then decide.