Setting up Jekyll on Windows with BrowserSync

I assume you have Chocolately Nuget installed on your machine.

From an administrative command prompt run the following:

choco install nodejs
choco install ruby -version 2.2.4 
choco install ruby2.devkit

At time of writing ruby version 2.2.4 works, later versions do not; otherwise bundle install fails later on.

Next, edit C:\tools\DevKit2\dk.rb and change the REG_KEYS to look like the following snippet:

REG_KEYS = [
    'Software\RubyInstaller\MRI',
    'Software\RubyInstaller\Rubinius',
    'Software\Wow6432Node\RubyInstaller\MRI'
]

Now relaunch the administrative prompt, goto C:\tools\DevKit2 and run:

ruby dk.rb init
ruby dk.rb install

Now relaunch the administrative prompt and run:

gem install bundler
gem install jekyll

Navigate to your newly minted git repository and run:

jekyll new .

Then make a GemFile with no extension with the following content:

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

Now run the following:

bundle install
gem update

Now lets try compiling using the Jekyll gem:

bundle exec jekyll serve

Jekyll should compile the site without any errors. If you get any errors, go here

Lets now try and add livereload to the project, shamelessly cribbed from here

Create a gulpfile.js with the following content:

var gulp = require('gulp');
var shell = require('gulp-shell');
var browserSync = require('browser-sync').create();

// Task for building blog when something changed:
gulp.task('build', shell.task(['bundle exec jekyll build --watch']));
// Or if you don't use bundle:
// gulp.task('build', shell.task(['jekyll build --watch']));

// Task for serving blog with Browsersync
gulp.task('serve', function () {
    browserSync.init({server: {baseDir: '_site/'}});
    // Reloads page when some of the already built files changed:
    gulp.watch('_site/**/*.*').on('change', browserSync.reload);
});

gulp.task('default', ['build', 'serve']);

Now run the following from your repository (use any defaults when asked)

npm init
npm install -g gulp
npm install --save-dev gulp-shell lodash gulp browser-sync

Now edit _config.yml and add the following statement to the bottom to prevent any watch issues:

exclude: [node_modules, gulpfile.js]

Lastly, run gulp

gulp