I got it working. I’m now able to run my site locally on Windows. Here’s how I did it:

apt install bundle
apt install ruby
apt install jekyll

cd into site directory

bundle exec jekyll serve

I ran into problems before, but it ran without a hitch this time.

Except you get this warning about how the auto-regenerate function might not work.

A bit of google-fu and I found this add-on to the command:

bundle exec jekyll serve --force_polling

And that did the trick!

P.S. I forgot that there’s an extension for this exact thing. It’s called Live Server. I could’ve saved myself a lot of headache, but that’s okay.

So, to update my website from Windows, I use the following:

  • VSCode
    • It’s easy to create new files and update them through the source control window
    • I also run a terminal with wsl so I can run the site locally
  • Github Desktop
    • This is like a fall-back option, in case I forget how to do everything from the terminal or VSCode
  • Windows Subsystem for Linux (wsl)
    • I run Ubuntu

I continue to struggle with footnotes in Jekyll / markdown. Not the end of the world, but it shouldn’t be this annoying.