Prelude (skip)
About two weeks ago I found out about an amazing free service that github has called github pages.
This service allows you to host a static web site per public project you have on github, in addition to a site for your account (E.g. http://accountname.github.com).
Besides having wizards that create the site for you (although I haven’t used that yet), github offers another very nice feature:
Github automatically process submits to the site via Jekyll, which is a simple yet amazingly efficient static site/blog creator.
Jekyll allows you to create templates based with variables written in YAML, and using Liquid to parse the templates, enabling you to write logic such as conditions and loops, making the static site more flexible and somewhat dynamic.
All you need to do is to commit to a project branch called gh-pages.
In case it’s the main account site, you simply push to the master branch of a project called accountname.github.com.
Being a curios person that I am, this was perfect for me,
Creating my own project pages was a great excuse for me to learn new skills such as ruby, YAML and Liquid.
here are the results:
I’m posting my public projects on the site, which BTW, you can see on the github badge on the right on this blog, which is a part of http://erikzaadi.github.com/jQueryPlugins that also includes the Print Element Plugin I posted about before.
The Wiki and Issues sections will remain at the regular github pages, but samples, download pages and posts regarding project updates will be done on the new site.
The layout is not yet final, but any feedback would still be greatly appreciated.
The site includes a small ode to jQuery , in form of a jQuery UI Theme switcher that you may notice on the top left part.
As a small side note, it’s amazing how easy it is to use the jQuery themes once you understand their genial simplicity.
By following a small set of rules (explained here), you can create a site that’s fully theme-able and flexible for design changes.
But that’s material for another post..
Enjoy,
Erik