In the previous article, we learned about running Jekyll through Azure App Services, the required deployment settings, and forcing continous deployment by installing Ruby from batch files created in Kudu. In part two of this series, we’ll be focusing on creating an Azure Web App and deploying the blog site using the automatic scripts running on Kudu.

One of the things that got me to use Jekyll, a static site generator, was that I could easily build my blog on GitHubPages, customize URLs, host source code on GitHub and deploy it to the cloud. I also wanted to build a Jekyll blog and host it on Azure Web Apps. The problem encountered, however is that Jekyll is based on Ruby and by default, Azure App Service does not support it.

When I launched the new version of my blog, I wanted things to be as simple as possible. No CMS, no admin UI, no rich-text editor, no databases, etc. Something I could edit with any generic text editor, add some simple markup language and deliver. That’s when I found Jekyll.

Markdown is a lightweight markup language with plain text formatting syntax designed so that it can be converted to HTML and many other formats using a tool by the same name. Markdown is often used to format readme files, for writing messages in online discussion forums and to create rich text using a plain text editor.

Over the Christmas holidays, I decided to force myself to learn some basic F# code. To get things going, I decided to create a small project that would get my hands dirty rather than spending a lot of time reading about all of the good things F# can do. I decided to create a simple project that would help me copy some projects at work from my local drive to the network once a week. Start with the basics and then make it complicated.