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Academic Website Template

This template was designed to provide an easy way to create academic websites. The goal is to lower the barrier to create webpages for scholars with limited knowledge about programming.

This is achieved by separating content from form. This way you can simply add your content and everything else is done for you. This template is heavily influenced by Academic pages and Simon Ho's website.

This website template is created with Jekyll - a static site generator - and uses the minimal mistakes theme. The template was created so that it's easy to deyloy to Github Pages, but you can make simple modifications to deploy it on other services (see the Jekyll documentation).

Building your website

  1. Create your own copy of this website by forking this GitHub repo
  2. Unwatch the repo
  3. Rename the repo to https://username.github.io (see step 3 of this guide)
  4. Your website should be live at https://username.github.io (see step 7 of this guide)

Modifying the website

Important note

There are two ways to modify your website. I will discuss them very briefly here to help you make your decision.

Adding the website's basic information

This information is configured in the _config.yml file. Here you can add information like the website's name, your name, links to your research platforms, and many other information. Explore the different options to find everything that can be modified.

Adding content

Most pages incorporate their content from two sources: the actual file (e.g., Research.md) and the yaml file with the same name that can be found in the _data directory.

This helps facilitate the process of adding new information because the yaml files are very easy and intuitive to use, even if you don't know any programming. These files follow a bullet or outline format and just require you to list the contents you want displayed in the page.

For example, the Research page presents all the information that you include in the Research.md file and then it includes the research projects you have listed in the research.yml file. This makes it easier to continually add new research projects in the yaml file and keep your webpage updated.

Below you will find a description of how to modify your website. If you prefer a more detailed version of this documentation please refer to the long version of this documentation.

  • Add content to existing pages

    The Research, Publications, Talks, and Software pages get their contents from their markdown and associated yaml file. So you have to modify both files.

  • Featured rows

    The Home and Research pages contain a feature row to highlight your interests. To modify these rows, you have to provide the required information in each page. You can check the theme's webpage for more details.

  • Add and remove pages

    Just create a markdown file in the _pages directory, add the metadata, and content. You also have to modify the navigation.yml file.

    To remove pages, just delete the page from the _pages directory and delete the entry from the navigation.yml.

  • Adding files for download

    Add the files you need to be available in the website (e.g., CV, pdf for downloading) in the downloads directory.

  • Blog

    To modify the blog's home page, just add your content to the blog.md file in _pages.

    Blog posts are in the _posts directory. You can remove the ones that are there for illustration purposes. They are all from the minimal mistakes theme project template.

    To add new blog posts, just create a new markdown file that meets the name and metadata requirements and add your content. See the Jekyll's webpage for more details.

Further customization

The website has many more features. Please read Jekyll's and minimal mistakes theme documentation for learning how to modify how the website looks and how it's structured.

Contributing to this project

All contributions are welcome!

You can help out by writing documentation or tutorials on how to modify certain things, report bugs or errors in code or documentation, fixing bugs, or by providing ideas. This is a beginner friendly project!

You are welcome to communicate any errors by submitting an issue on Github.

To fix bugs, clone the repository, add your contribution, and submit a pull request.

If have suggestions on how to improve the website design (e.g., default tabs, theme, etc.), please open an issue on Github or email me. Please keep in mind that the template should be general enough so that any features work for most people, so only suggestions that will benefit most people will be incorporated.

Other options

Author

This project was developed by Mario E. Bermonti-Pérez as part of his academic research and activities. Feel free to contact me at mbermonti@psm.edu or mbermonti1132@gmail.com

License

This project is based on the minimal mistakes starter repository and is licensed under the MIT license, just as the original project.

Please read the License file for more details.