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alshedivat/al-folio

15,590HTMLAudience · researcherComplexity · 2/5Setup · easy

TLDR

al-folio is a clean, ready-made academic website theme built on Jekyll, researchers, students, and professors fork it, fill in their content, and get a free GitHub-hosted homepage without building anything from scratch.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((al-folio))
    What it is
      Jekyll theme
      Academic websites
      Free GitHub hosting
    Page types
      About and bio
      Publications
      Blog posts
      Projects
    Setup options
      Fork and fill
      Docker local preview
      GitHub Pages deploy
    Audience
      Researchers
      Professors
      Students
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Code map

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Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Launch a personal academic homepage with a bio, publications list, and blog posts by forking the repo and filling in your details

USE CASE 2

Set up a free GitHub Pages website for a research lab or course site that looks professional without any design work

USE CASE 3

Preview your academic site locally using the Docker image without installing Ruby or Jekyll yourself

Tech stack

JekyllHTMLDocker

Getting it running

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 30min

In plain English

al-folio is a Jekyll theme aimed at academics, a ready-made design for personal and professional websites that researchers, students, and labs can adopt without building one from scratch. Jekyll is a tool that turns a folder of plain Markdown files and configuration into a static website that can be hosted for free on GitHub Pages, and a "theme" gives that site a consistent layout, styling, and set of page templates. The README describes the design itself as simple, clean, and responsive, meaning the layout adapts well to phones, tablets, and desktops. The way you would use it is to copy or fork the repository, fill in your content (an about page, publications, blog posts, project pages, and so on), and let GitHub Pages or another Jekyll-friendly host build and serve it. The repository also offers a Docker image for people who would rather run the site locally without installing a Ruby and Jekyll stack themselves. You would reach for al-folio if you are a researcher, professor, or graduate student who needs a personal homepage, a lab page, or a course or workshop site that looks tidy and professional out of the box. The README highlights a large community of academics already using it for exactly these purposes, and it points to many such live sites as examples. The full README is longer than what was provided.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
I forked al-folio and want to add my publications list. What file format does the repo expect for publications, and how do I make them show up on the site?
Prompt 2
How do I deploy my al-folio fork to GitHub Pages, what settings do I need to enable and what branch should the site build from?
Prompt 3
I want to add a projects page to my al-folio site with images and descriptions. Walk me through the file structure and front-matter I need to create.
Prompt 4
My al-folio site works locally with Docker but the GitHub Pages build is failing. What are the most common causes and how do I debug them?
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