Creating a self-study website using Godaddy, Github Pages, and Jekyll

Github Project: jacobbweber.github.io

It’s been years since I created a website. A decade ago I would have hosted an internal server at home, likely IIS, and made it publicly available. I wanted to find a cheaper and slightly easier solution. After some research I came across jekyll and github pages. This was perfect for my needs. I could write documentation in markdown stored in github and poof, its a website.

Below are shorthand notes and general overview on how I made my own site.

Overview

• Optionally - Purchase a domain using GoDaddy Domain: jacobbweber.com

  If you do not wish to pay, you can do this for free but your URL will be yourgithubproject.github.io. My domain was so cheap plus the benefit of free email contact@jacobbweber.com, the cool factor seemed worth it. Eventually I will look into using Cloudflare as a provider instead of GoDaddy.

• Researched Jekyll Resources
• Github Pages Gitjub Pages also see: Github + Jekyll

Steps

• I chose the free “Chirpy” jekyll theme - review installation options and choose what works for you.
• I created a github project, my project is jacobbweber.github.io
• In the project’s Settings
  • Go to “Pages” section
    • Change Build and Deployment source, from “Branch”, to “Github Actions”
    • If you bought a custom domain, also configure the “Custom Domain” option on this same page and follow the steps it provides to verify and configure DNS for your domain.
• Update the _config.yml file to include your own details.
• Commit your changes and this should trigger the deployment. (Check your github projects deployment progress and output)
• Navigate to https://yourprojectname.github.io to see your website.

  Go back to your pages subsection under Settings to find your URL.

References

Template Documentation: https://chirpy.cotes.page/