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If you are using this template, feel free to share your site with me, and I'll add it here!
This is a statically-generated Jekyll/Liquid/Bootstrap-based website template for academics. I started with the Allan lab webpage and modified it into a personal academic webpage that met my requirements. I worked in a unique set of the features that I desired and could not find in publicly available templates elsewhere. Some examples are:
About me
pageI encourage using this webpage as a template for your academic website. The remainder of this document describes how to do this. Broadly speaking, there are three steps:
fork
button in the top-right corner of its Github page.$ bundle exec jekyll serve
in the repository root directorylocalhost:4000
, which you can access with your web browser.Note:
Rakefile
in the root directory of the source branch.
You can do so by first modifying the file as appropriate and then, after pushing your changes, execute rake publish
._config.yml
as appropriate_data/*.yml
, as appropriate_pages/*.md
, as appropriateThe pages in the top navbar are in the _config.yml
file.
The typical options are already included or commented on, though additional pages can be created and listed here.
All pages are located in the _pages
directory.
Pages generally load information from YAML databases located as _data/*.yml
.
Creating new pages can be done by using existing pages as a template.
All pages require header information. Example header data for the 'Talks' page is below.
---
title: "Talks"
layout: gridlay
sitemap: false
permalink: /talks/
---
The layout
variable corresponds to HTML layouts in the _layouts
directory.
The difference between most layouts is subtle, and gridlay
can generally be used.
The permalink must be unique for each page and correspond to the directory storing the page in the compiled HTML.
Refer to your pages in _config.yml
via the title
variable.
All pages are written in Markdown as *.md
.
HTML commands and CSS styles can be directly used in a markdown files.
The publications and talks are now listed via Jekyll Scholar.
The bibliography file ref.bib
is located in the assets/
directory.
Modify according to your needs.
Once your site has been modified to fit your needs, you should host it somewhere so others can access it.
A simple way to host your site for free is via Github Pages.
This will provide you with a free domain name at your_github_username.github.io.
Instructions on how to do this are available on their page.
They generally involve creating a repository on your Github titled your_github_username.github.io
and uploading your files there (everything except the _site/
directory, which the GitHub Pages service will generate using its own version of Jekyll).
Then, GitHub will automatically rebuild your site every time you push a commit to the repository (no bundle/Jekyll commands required).
You can use a standard domain service (e.g. GoDaddy) to purchase a domain name.
Then, using the CNAME
file and modifying the DNS settings of the domain service, you can direct your custom domain to the GitHub Pages-generated site.
Detailed instructions for doing this for GoDaddy domains are available here, though analogous instructions apply to other services.
If you already have a hosting service for a static HTML webpage, such as some universities provide, you can build your website locally using bundle exec jekyll serve
.
Then, upload the resulting files to this server via SSH or FTP via the _site/
directory.
Be sure that the site.url
and site.baseurl
are set appropriately in the _config.yml
file.
A list of static webpage generators is available here. For academic purposes, I believe most people use Jekyll or Hugo. I am mostly unaware of their relative merits. However, both are relatively easy to use and offer many templates to base your ideas off of. This, in combination with their large user bases, makes them particularly attractive. This site is built with Jekyll.
Other Jekyll templates are, of course, available. Some of these are viable for very simple academic pages with little tuning:
However, they do not natively include many of the features I list at the top. For this reason, I decided to construct my own.
I credit the Allen Lab for creating a beautiful academic research group webpage. Many parts of this site were adopted or copied from their laboratory webpage.
MIT