My Website

A minimal static website. Includes a simple markdown to html generator.

Quick Start

1. Build the site:

   uv run build.py

2. View the site:

   open `public/index.html`
   # or open in your browser

Deployment

For deployment, github pages expects the site index.html to be in the root directory in the gh-pages branch. To avoid polluting the main branch with built files, we create a clean branch and copy the built files to the root directory each time we deploy.

# Delete the gh-pages branch (if it exists)
git branch -D gh-pages

# Build the site
uv run build.py

# Create and switch to gh-pages branch (which is the branch that GitHub Pages uses)
git switch -c gh-pages

# Copy built files to the root directory (which is the branch that GitHub Pages uses)
cp -r public/* .

# Commit and push
git add .
git commit -m "Update site"
# force push to overwrite the remote gh-pages branch if it exists
git push --force origin gh-pages

# Switch back to main branch
git switch main

Alternatively, you can run the deploy.sh script, which does the above steps:

./deploy.sh

Project Structure

├── build.py              # Static site generator script
├── pyproject.toml        # Python dependencies
├── uv.lock               # Python dependencies
├── content/              # Content source files
│   ├── blog/             # Blog posts (Markdown)
│   └── assets/           # Static assets
│       ├── images/       # Images (including profile photo)
│       └── papers/       # Research papers (PDFs)
├── templates/            # HTML templates
│   ├── base.html         # Base template with common HTML structure
│   ├── homepage.html     # Homepage layout
│   └── post.html         # Blog post layout
└── public/               # Generated website (output)
    ├── index.html        # Homepage
    ├── blog/             # Individual blog post pages
    └── assets/           # Copied static assets

Adding Content

Adding a New Blog Post

1. Create a new Markdown file in content/blog/ with the naming convention:

   YYYY-MM-DD-post-title.md
   

2. Add YAML frontmatter at the top:

   ---
   title: Your Post Title
   ---
   
   Your content here...

3. Run the build script:

   python build.py

Customize the site

Edit the configuration in build.py to customize:

• Your name and bio
• Research description
• Publications list
• Blog description

Example configuration:

self.config = {
    'name': 'Your Name',
    'bio': '<p>Your bio here...</p>',
    'research_description': 'Description of your research...',
    'blog_description': 'What you blog about...',
    'publications': [
        {
            'title': 'Paper Title',
            'year': 2024,
            'authors': 'Author List',
            'venue': 'Conference/Journal Name',
            'pdf_url': 'assets/papers/paper.pdf',
            'arxiv_url': 'https://arxiv.org/abs/...'
        }
    ]
}

Adding Assets

• Profile photo: Place profile image at content/assets/images/profile.jpg
• Research papers: Add PDFs to content/assets/papers/
• Other images: Add to content/assets/images/

Local Development

Serving the Site Locally

You can use Python's built-in server to preview your site:

# After building
cd public
uv run python -m http.server 8000

Then visit http://[::]:8000 in your browser.

Customization

Styling

The site uses Pico.css for styling. You can:

1. Customize colors: Pico.css supports CSS custom properties
2. Add custom CSS: Edit the <style> section in templates/base.html
3. Override Pico defaults: Add your own CSS rules

Templates

The site uses three templates:

• base.html: Common HTML structure, includes Pico.css
• homepage.html: Layout for the main page
• post.html: Layout for individual blog posts

Templates use simple {{ variable }} syntax for content replacement.