WE3Lab Website — Editing Guide

All routine content updates are made by editing JSON files and pushing to main. GitHub Actions rebuilds the affected HTML automatically (weekly on Sunday nights, or triggered manually).

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Triggering a rebuild manually

Go to Actions → Update Site → Run workflow in GitHub to rebuild immediately rather than waiting for the Sunday schedule.

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Adding or updating a lab member

Edit members/members.json and add or update an entry in the members array:

{
  "name": "Jane Smith",
  "role": "phd student",
  "groups": ["energy flexibility", "infrastructure planning"],
  "scholar_id": "XXXXXXXXX",
  "scholar_url": "https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=XXXXXXXXX",
  "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/janesmith/",
  "website": "",
  "cv": ""
}

Valid roles: postdoc, phd student, ms student, undergrad, staff, alumni

Valid groups (must match exactly): energy flexibility, infrastructure planning, separations, water technology

For alumni, add:

"degree_year": "PhD 2024",
"placement": "Google DeepMind"

Push to main. The next GitHub Actions run regenerates people.html and all research subgroup pages.

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Adding a member photo

Photos are displayed automatically if a file named {first}{last}.png (lowercase, no spaces) exists in members/images/.

1. Crop the photo to a square (any resolution; 400×400px is fine).
2. Save it as e.g. janesmith.png.
3. Commit and push to members/images/janesmith.png.

No rebuild is needed — the build script picks up the image the next time it runs.

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Adding a news item to the front page

Edit assets/news.json and prepend a new entry:

{
  "date": "May 2026",
  "headline": "Paper accepted at Nature Water",
  "link": "https://example.com/paper"
}

Push to main. The front page loads news.json at runtime (no build step required), so the item appears immediately after the push.

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Adding a new research subgroup

This requires two small edits:

1. Create the subgroup page by copying an existing one (e.g. research/separations.html) and editing the title and description.

2. Register the group in subgroups.json:

   { "key": "new group name", "label": "New Group Name", "file": "research/newgroup.html" }

   The build scripts read this file automatically — no Python edits needed. If the HTML file listed in research/subgroups.json does not exist, the scripts will exit with a 404 error identifying the missing page.

3. Add members to the group using the groups field in members/members.json (see above).

Push to main and trigger a manual workflow run.

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How the automation works

File edited	What rebuilds	How
members/members.json	people.html, all research/*.html member lists	GitHub Actions runs build_people_page.py + update_subgroup_members.py
members/images/*.png	Nothing — images are served directly	Static file, no build needed
assets/news.json	Nothing — loaded client-side at runtime	Push and it's live
research/*.html (content)	Nothing	Edit directly

The workflow runs every Sunday at 6 pm PT and can be triggered manually from the Actions tab.