Academic personal site built with Jekyll 4 and the Minimal Mistakes remote theme. Originally forked from AcademicPages.
Requirements: Ruby 3.1+ (latest Ruby works fine) and Bundler.
# macOS: install Ruby if needed
brew install ruby
# then ensure Homebrew Ruby is on your PATH (brew prints instructions after install)
bundle install
bin/serveOpen http://127.0.0.1:4000. The server rebuilds automatically on file changes.
bin/serve loads _config_dev.yml so internal links stay on localhost (production url in _config.yml is unchanged for deploy).
Local preview workflow: save a file → wait for ...done in X seconds → refresh the browser (Cmd+Shift+R). Do not refresh while a rebuild is running. If the site looks broken (missing CSS/photo), run bin/build then restart bin/serve. Restart bin/serve after any _config.yml change.
Other useful commands:
bundle exec jekyll build # one-off build → _site/
bundle exec jekyll serve --livereload --drafts # include draft posts| What | Where |
|---|---|
| Home page | _pages/about.md |
| Site settings, author info, nav | _config.yml, _data/navigation.yml |
| Blog posts | _posts/ |
| Publications | _publications/ |
| Talks | _talks/ |
| Teaching | _teaching/ |
| Software | _software/ |
| CV | _pages/cv.md |
Restart the dev server after changing _config.yml.
The site is built and deployed via GitHub Actions (.github/workflows/deploy.yml), not GitHub's legacy Jekyll builder. This allows Jekyll 4 and the remote theme.
To publish:
- Push to
main - In the repo on GitHub: Settings → Pages → Build and deployment → Source: GitHub Actions
- The deploy workflow runs automatically on each push to
main
The repo can stay private if you have GitHub Pro (or equivalent) with Pages enabled.
- Jekyll 4.4 + Minimal Mistakes (remote theme)
- GitHub Actions for build and deploy
- Sass via
jekyll-sass-converter+sassc
Notes on other academic site templates and tools worth comparing:
- Minimal Mistakes Theme — Actively maintained Jekyll theme
- AcademicPages — Original template this was forked from
- al-folio — Alternative academic portfolio template
- astro
- Hugo, HugoBlox, https://github.com/HugoBlox/kit
- https://github.com/sbryngelson/academic-website-template [and https://ethan-pickering.github.io/aboutwebsite.html]
A Github Pages template for academic websites. This was forked (then detached) by Stuart Geiger from the Minimal Mistakes Jekyll Theme, which is © 2016 Michael Rose and released under the MIT License. See LICENSE.md.