Dr. Barbara

Dr. Barbara

Making Data Matter

As a data scientist, you’re probably comfortable with Jupyter notebooks and GitHub repositories. But let’s be honest – sending someone a repo link isn’t exactly the most elegant way to showcase your work. What if you could have a beautiful, professional website that’s as easy to update as pushing to a repository? Enter GitHub Pages.

Digital Home Base Motivations

Back in 2020, I was drowning in a sea of options for building my online presence. WordPress felt bloated, Medium wasn’t customizable enough, and hand-coding a responsive website seemed like overkill. That’s when I discovered GitHub Pages, and it turned out to be the perfect solution for a data professional’s needs.

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What makes it click for data people? It’s version control native (if you can git push, you can update your website), Markdown-based (just like your notebooks!), and perfect for embedding visualizations and code snippets. Plus, it’s free, secure (HTTPS by default), and looks professional with custom domain support.

What makes it click for data people? It’s version control native (if you can git push, you can update your website), Markdown-based (just like your notebooks!), and perfect for embedding visualizations and code snippets. Plus, it’s free, secure (HTTPS by default), and looks professional with custom domain support.

The Building Blocks: Understanding Your Site

Before we dive into setup, let’s peek at what makes up a GitHub Pages site:

yoursite.github.io/
├── _config.yml           # Your site's control center
├── index.md              # Your homepage
├── _posts/               # Where your blog posts live
├── _pages/               # Static pages (About, Portfolio)
├── _data/               # Site data files
│   └── navigation.yml   # Navigation structure
└── assets/             # Images and other media

Think of it like a well-organized data project: your configuration goes in _config.yml, your content lives in _posts and _pages, and all your assets have their proper place. Simple, right?

Quick Start Guide

Prerequisites

  • Basic Git knowledge (if you can commit and push, you’re ready)
  • A GitHub account
  • A text editor
  • Basic terminal familiarity

Step 1: Create Your Repository

  1. Log into GitHub
  2. Create a new repository named yourusername.github.io – The name is crucial – it must match this format exactly!

Step 2: Set Up Your Theme

We’ll use Minimal Mistakes (clean, professional, great for data visualization). Fork the starter repository, rename it to yourusername.github.io, and:

rm -rf .git
git init
git add .
git commit -m "Initial commit"
git branch -M main
git remote add origin git@github.com:yourusername/yourusername.github.io.git
git push -u origin main

Step 3: Initial Configuration

The _config.yml file is your website’s control center. Here’s a minimal configuration to get started:

Step 3: Configure

In _config.yml, set up your basics:

title: Your Name
subtitle: "Data Scientist | Machine Learning Engineer"
description: "Personal website and blog about data science"
url: "https://yourusername.github.io"

Step 4: Add Your First Content

Create your first blog post:

  1. Create a new file in _posts/2024-02-15-first-post.md
  2. Add front matter and content:
 ---
 title: "Why Every Data Scientist Needs a Blog"
 date: 2024-02-15
 categories:
   - blog
 tags:
   - data science
   - writing
   - career
 ---

Your content here in Markdown format...

Don’t overthink it – start with something like “Why I Love Data” or “My Journey into Machine Learning”. The beauty of GitHub Pages is you can always update it later!

Step 5: Deploy Your Site

  1. Push your changes to GitHub: 
    git add .
git commit -m "Add initial content"
git push origin main
  2. Enable GitHub Pages:
    • Go to your repository settings
    • Navigate to “Pages”
    • Under “Build and deployment”, select:
      • Source: “Deploy from a branch”
      • Branch: “main” (or your preferred branch)
    • Click Save
  3. Wait a few minutes for GitHub to build your site
  4. Visit https://yourusername.github.io to see your live site!

Common Gotchas

  • Repository must be named exactly yourusername.github.io
  • Always check your YAML indentation in _config.yml
  • Be patient after pushing – builds take a few minutes
  • When local testing and not seeing an expected change, it can be helpful to delete “_site” and rebuild again.

Next Steps

In Post 2: Jekyll Deep Dive, we’ll explore:

  • Setting up your local development environment
  • Customizing your theme
  • Working with collections and layouts
  • Adding dynamic features
  • Optimizing for search engines

In other posts, I’d like to cover:

  • Content Organization: Set up collections for projects and papers
  • Local Testing: Set up a local development environment (we’ll cover this in Post 2)
  • Analytics: Add Google Analytics to track your reach

Resources

“Your work is only as visible as your ability to share it effectively.”

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