Setup Prerequisites

The basics

If not already present, check that the system-level infrastructure is present:

sudo apt-get install ruby ruby2.1-dev zlib1g-dev

Install a JavaScript engine for Ruby:

sudo gem install therubyracer

Create file Gemfile in the repository michaelhwalther.github.io:

source 'https://rubygems.org'
gem 'github-pages'

Finally, run this to install gem “github-pages” (and Jekyll as one of its prequisites):

bundle install

Check-in the Gemfile and the generated Gemfile.lock (=snapshot of versions as found/installed on this host)

Generate first blog site

Run somewhere:

jekyll new some-name

Then move generated content into the top-level repository.
This “trick” allows to ‘adopt’ a generated repository (e.g. cloned from github) to be used as the source for the blog.

Setup a .gitignore for Jekyll-files and check it in:

_site/
.sass-cache/
.jekyll-metadata

To locally test the Jekyll site, use: jekyll serve and point your Browser to http://localhost:4000

Now, check the git status and add any files listed using git add. Finally, commit and push the changes to github and check the result in the blog.