A fast, secure, low maintenance Jekyll platform engineered for long term flexibility and performance
Brinker Web Design is my personal development portfolio and technical writing hub. It was intentionally designed to be lightweight, secure, and easy to scale without the overhead of database driven CMS platforms. This project demonstrates my engineering approach to modern static site architecture and the workflows that support it.
Why Jekyll was the right choice
Choosing a static site generator provided several advantages:
- Lightweight performance with no PHP or MySQL
- Increased security by removing admin interfaces
- Full control of theme templates and structure
- Fast deployment through Git
- Markdown based content for efficient writing
- Clean semantic permalinks that support SEO
- Scalable architecture that remains easy to maintain
Jekyll delivered exactly the simplicity and speed I needed while remaining highly customizable.
Evaluating alternatives
Before settling on Jekyll I explored:
- Angular with a Symfony backend
- Pure PHP frameworks
- JavaScript heavy SPA options
Although powerful, each carried far more operational overhead or dependency maintenance than I wanted for a portfolio project. A static Jekyll site offered speed and stability without compromise.
Custom Jekyll architecture
The site is engineered with a proprietary CSS grid, modular SCSS, and Liquid based layouts.
Key decisions include:
- Custom collections for portfolio items
- SCSS preprocessing and centralized design tokens
- Liquid partials for reusable components
- Gulp powered build and deploy automation
- Git based workflow for versioned releases
- Zero database or runtime dependencies
- Instant deploys and low ongoing maintenance
Using Yeoman for project scaffolding
To standardize and accelerate project setup I used the Jekyllized Yeoman generator:
https://github.com/sondr3/generator-jekyllized
Development dependencies
All build tools are part of my standard environment:
- Ruby
- Bundler
- Node.js
- Yo
- Gulp
To initialize the project:
npm install
bundle install
Then I customized:
- YAML for site structure and collections
- Portfolio collections and taxonomy
- Liquid includes for modular templates
- SCSS for the proprietary grid system
- Gulp tasks for compilation and deployment
Background pattern credit: https://github.com/LeaVerou/css3patterns
Results
This architecture delivers:
- Extremely fast load times
- Minimal attack surface and no admin UI
- Markdown based blogging workflow
- Fully custom CSS grid and SCSS structure
- Automated deployments through Gulp and Git
- Clean semantic markup for SEO
The result is a highly optimized, low maintenance platform that supports my writing, client portfolio, and future service expansions.
Looking for a developer focused on performance, security, and long term maintainability
Static architecture is a strong fit for portfolios, documentation sites, marketing pages, and fast brochure style sites. This project shows how a Jekyll based build can stay fast, secure, and easy to enhance over time.
If you want something lightweight, secure, and engineered for the long term I can help you plan and build it.
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