How I built this site

31 May 2024

A short guide on how I made this minimalist website.

My requirements

• Minimal cost
• Low maintenance
• A simple blog
• Ability to preview changes on my laptop

The stack

I explored various blogging platforms but found GitHub Pages to be the best fit due to its simplicity and my daily use of GitHub. Here’s the setup I chose:

Namecheap - domain registration (davidplumridge.com) GitHub Pages - website hosting Jekyll - static site generator Visual Studio - IDE

Step by step

1. Create the GitHub repository
   • Create a repo called <your-username>.github.io
   • Full instructions here
2. Setup the custom domain davidplumridge.com
   • Create a file named CNAME in the repository like this one here
   • Setup the DNS records with namecheap. Full instructions here

3. Install Jekyll. I did this by following the 3 commands from their homepage here

4. How I customized the site;
   • You can find themes here
   • Updated includes here
   • Updating layouts like this one here
   • Adding extra pages like this one here
5. Preview your changes locally by starting Jekyll on your laptop before pushing
   • run (mac): bundle exec jekyll serve

Some issues that I had to resolve

• Cant find header files for Ruby solution here (sudo xcode-select –install && sudo xcodebuild -license)
• Unable to install Jekyll on OSX solution here
• Unable to resolve type ‘size_t’ solution here