Academic Hosting 101

A short guide about how to host your academic websites using Jekyll.

Creating simple, powerful websites and hosting them for free.

As an academic, its a common need to share information about your portfolio, or your class, or your next reading group. In this tutorial, we will use a very simple program, Jekyll to create such websites and host them free on Github using Github Pages. Then, we will explore several off-the-shelf themes to make your website look good. Finally, we will cover one popular theme al-folio using which you can share your portfolio as well as maintain a list of publications with your already exisiting bibtex.

Installations

First, let us install the required tools in your system.

Install Jekyll

Jekyll is a Ruby Gem which can be installed in most systems. Ruby is a scripting language which powers the website builder toolkit Jekyll. Follow the instructions based on your system of choice:

Common installation - Linux or Mac

• Install Ruby Version Manager (RVM). Open a Terminal (Control + Alt + T) and type the following commands:

(Check the instructions how to get gpg)

gpg --keyserver hkp://keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 409B6B1796C275462A1703113804BB82D39DC0E3

and

\curl -sSL https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable --rails

• Install Ruby. Here we will use the version 2.3.1

  rvm install 2.3.1
  

• Now that Ruby is installed, you can proceed to install Jekyll based on the system:

For Mac only

Copy paste the following in your Terminal:

• Installs required dependencies to install Jekyll

xcode-select --install

• Install the Jekyll Gem

  gem install --user-install bundler jekyll
  

• Open your bash config file. Its the file called .bashrc which is located in the home directory. You can edit the file using any editor of choice, here we will use nano. Type in the Terminal:

  nano ~/.bashrc
  

• This will open the file in your Terminal itself. Scroll down to the very end, and paste these two lines:

  export GEM_HOME=$HOME/gems
  export PATH=$HOME/gems/bin:$PATH
  

For more information / reference, check this doc.

For Ubuntu

• Make sure you have the required dependencies for Jekyll. Copy paste the following in your Terminal.

  sudo apt-get install build-essential zlib1g-dev
  

• Remember you already installed Ruby from the previous step. Now we just need to install the Jekyll Gem, which is the same procedure as for Mac:

  gem install jekyll bundler
  

Thats it! You can also refer this document for alternative ways to install.

Windows

• Install RubyInstaller, which will take care of the installation of Ruby. Download the top executable: Ruby+Devkit 2.5.3-1 (x64). Run and install.

• Once installed, open a new command prompt, and type the following:

  gem install jekyll bundler
  

This should install Jekyll and necessary files. If you need more information, refer to this document.

Install Git

In order to use various templates off from the web to create your website, we would also need a popular version control system Git. You can get all installation instructions here. Also, make sure you have created your Github account to be able to host your own webpages.

Jekyll Theme Installation - Using al-folio theme

Jekyll provides a nice way to incorporate multiple themes for your website. In this tutorial, we will use the al-folio theme which has a nice support for maintaining academic webpages including bibliography. To first install and run the theme, clone the repository.

Then, open your Terminal / Command Prompt and run these commands as mentioned in the installation guide:

$ git clone https://github.com/alshedivat/al-folio.git al-folio
$ cd al-folio
$ bundle install
$ bundle exec jekyll serve

Thats it! Let us first see how the default website looks like. Run the following from the folder in your terminal:

jekyll serve

This will open up the default website in your browser. If it didn't open up automatically, just head over to a browser and paste this in the run bar:

http://127.0.0.1:4000

Building the website

Coming Soon