Building fast static sites with Jekyll in 2024
Jekyll still ships. Here's how to make it scream.
Jekyll isn’t dead. It’s just not the shiny new object anymore, which means the people still using it are using it intentionally.
Static sites have had a renaissance. The JAMstack era brought us Next.js, Astro, and Eleventy—all worthy. But for writers and small product sites, Jekyll’s simplicity remains hard to beat.
Why Jekyll in 2024
The entire stack is: Markdown → HTML. There’s no hydration, no client bundle, no data fetching layer. The output is files. Files go to a CDN. Done.
When you optimize for that constraint rather than fight it, you end up with something remarkably fast.
Performance checklist
A few optimizations that make a real difference:
# _config.yml
sass:
style: compressed
# Use jekyll-assets or manual minification
plugins:
- jekyll-minifier
Combine that with font subsetting, proper cache headers on your CDN, and image lazy loading, and you’re regularly hitting 98+ Lighthouse scores without exotic tooling.
The lesson: constraints breed performance. Static sites win on the web because they’re the simplest possible thing that works.