You might not. But I did. I stopped blogging on wordpress a while ago. Because of the ads.

Good news! Now that we live in the future we can opt out of having ads in our blogs and websites.

There’s more than one solution. The one that I’m using for this site is called Jekyll. It’s pretty simple to get started. If you want to try it out just read on!

Step 1: Follow the instructions in the Jekyll quickstart

You can find the quickstart here. As part of the quickstart you’ll be installing Ruby on your computer. Don’t worry, it’s simple. Also, you’ll be running some simple commands in a command prompt of your choice. Unfamiliar with command prompts? Not to worry! The Internet has got your back. Or ask a friend. Someone you know can teach you how. And it’s a skill you can use for the rest of your life.

Step 2: Edit a few of the files that were created during your Jekyll quickstart

First, edit the _config.yml file. Just follow the instructions contained in the file. Change some things and see what happens - it’s very easy. Once you are satisfied with your _config.yml, edit about.md. There are instructions and examples in there. Try some stuff. See what happens. The next step after that is to follow the instructions and edit the contents of the files in the _posts folder.

Step 3: Sign up for a github account and push your Jekyll files to a github pages repository

This is probably the most challenging step, but still not hard. Git is widely popular. If you get stuck or lost, ask someone you know to teach you. You don’t have to know a whole lot about git to get your website off the ground.

You can sign up for a github account here.

And you can learn about github pages here.

Step 4: Enjoy your newly-created, ad-free website

That’s it. Nothing else to it. Jekyll can do a lot more than what we’ve covered thus far, but if you’re like me then you can be perfectly content with what you’ve got at this point.