About This Site

Status of latest changes:

How it works

This site is built on a few technologies

• Hugo
• Markdown
• GitHub Actions

Hugo

Hugo is a tool that allows you to use markdown files (files that end with .md typically) to build HTML files based on templates. This is typically used to allow for quick, non-technical building of websites. A base can be setup by someone more technical, and a user can fill in the content. It is highly flexible, but more complexity means more HTML/JS/CSS knowledge.

Markdown

Markdown is a "programming language" (more of a templating language) that's easy to write and kinda follows basic formatting you'd see in something like word. Even this README.md file is build using markdown!

Learn more about the syntax here.

GitHub Actions

Behind the scenes, whenever you "save" and update these files, an action will be triggered to build the website and publish it. It takes between 15-30 seconds for it to go live. You can visit this page to see the status. If you see a red X at the top, something has gone wrong while deploying the website.

What to edit

99% of the editing of your website will be done through either .md files for content or .yaml/.yml files for config.

Layout

From this page you're current at (here), at the top you should see what looks like a file and folder structure. You'll see things like /assets, archetypes, content, etc. Let's go through these and which you'll end up using.

config/__default

There are two files here worth editing:

• params.toml - includes configuration for your profile picture, title, description, and social media links
• menus.toml - configure which headers appear at the top
  • name tells us which text is displayed on the page
  • identifier tells us which file from the /content folder we use
  • url tells us what the URL will while visiting this page
  • weight orders the list

content

The majority of the content you'll be creating goes here.

• Collections of similar pages (like blogs) go in a folder
• The _index.md file is the default page (in this case, the Home page)
• Each page name corresponds to the identifier in the menus.toml mentioned above
• Each page is a markdown page, which means its simple editing will be turned into an HTML page when deployed
• The content at the top between the --- is used by Hugo to help set the tab name and provide metadata
  • The title and date will be the most common used
  • The CV page is special b/c it shows a PDF. It requires the type and doc to let it know which layout to use and which file to use from the /static/docs directory
  • If you're looking to post your website on things like twitter, we can add more things here to help render it better

static

This folder is used to organize your documents/pdfs, images, and other non-text type material. This is where your profile pic, CV, and other pics and docs can go.

Ignore

You can ignore these for now since they're more technical in nature:

• /.github
• /archetypes
• /assets
• /i18n
• /layouts

How to edit

You can edit most all of this from right inside GitHub!

Adding a file or directory

From a given directory, at the top right you'll see a button called "Add file" button that will let you either upload existing files (useful for images and pdfs) or create new ones (useful for more .md files). By adding a slash / in the name of the file, you can create folders, too.

Editing an existing file

Editing a file in GitHub is easy. Navigate to the file you want, and use the pencil button above the contents to edit it.

While making changes, you can click "Preview" to see a rought preview of what the page will end up looking like.

Finally, when you're done, scroll to the bottom to save. While you don't have to add a title or description to your change, I would recommend adding one. GitHub keeps track of a list of all changes (and past history) of your site. These are not visible on the website, but are visible on GitHub.