As an academic researcher at any level (technician, facillitator, graduate student, postdoc, professor, etc.), you want to have an accessible platform for showcasing your work and contact information. There are many outlets through which to create a professional website, such as WIX, GoogleSites, Wordpress, Squarespace and others. However, some of these providers may not be free, require some knowledge of HTML/CSS, or are cumbersome to maintain. Github Pages powered by Jekyll are free, reproducible, and open-source ways to hosting a professional, organization, or project website. Templates can be modified using local git or directly through Github like any other files hosted on Github.
This Github Pages lesson was created by modifying the git-novice lessons found here in order to teach how to customize a template gh-pages / jekyll repository to make a personal webpage.
Prerequisites
In this lesson we use Git from the Unix Shell. Some previous experience with the shell is expected, but isn’t mandatory.
| Setup | Download files required for the lesson | |
| 00:00 | 1. Introduction to GitHub Pages |
What is GitHub?
What are GitHub Pages? |
| 00:20 | 2. Personalizing the Academic Pages Template | How can I make a personal website with GitHub Pages? |
| 00:50 | 3. Viewing Changes Locally with Jekyll | How can I view my changes locally |
| 01:00 | Finish |
The actual schedule may vary slightly depending on the topics and exercises chosen by the instructor.