I want to try a new free place to host my dev blog, and currently use Wordpress.com free hosting. I don't like most of the free themes they have to offer, and the ones that work still don't let me customize them enough to my liking. So I'm looking for something more flexible.
I recently heard about Jekyll and how it integrates with your GitHub account to make website or portfolio for your programming projects. Now here's what I don't get. As it advertises itself as "blog-aware", can it be a direct substitute for WordPress? If it's hosted online why do you need RubyGems for its setup?