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Lesson 3: Create web pages with GitHub Pages

In this lesson, you'll learn how to use GitHub Pages to turn the markdown files in your GitHub repository into a functioning webpage.

Lesson objectives

  • Explore GitHub repository functionality
  • Create a webpage from markdown files using GitHub Pages & jekyll
  • Customize your web pages; create a website
  • Embed multimedia content

Lesson video

The following video demonstrates each of the steps outlined below in text:

<iframe height="480" width="853" allowfullscreen frameborder=0 src="https://echo360.ca/media/fbed2775-7252-4c33-977f-8e232fc6caa3/public?autoplay=false&automute=false"></iframe>

1. A GitHub Pages explainer

<iframe width="864" height="514" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2MsN8gpT6jY" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

2. Explore features and settings | Set up GitHub Pages

In this step, you will explore some of the functionality available in a GitHub repository, which includes GitHub Pages.

  • Ensure that you've created two Markdown files in the docs folder (index.md and one other), as outlined in Lesson 2.
  • Click through the various top-level tabs in the repository to explore the features that are available GitHub repository tabs
    • Issues allow you, collaborators, and external users to report problems with your code and suggest changes
    • Pull requests lists any requests from external users to merge their code into yours to provide new functionality
    • Actions allow you to run automate processes from within your GitHub repository
    • Projects is a Trello-like task planner
    • Wiki is a wiki for yourself and collaborators
    • Security lets you configure security features for your repository and code
    • Insights shows stats on contributions, viewership, and use of your repository
    • Settings allows you to configure a variety of other features within your repository
  • Open the Settings Tab. Briefly explore the various options on the side panel.
  • Go to Settings > Options. Scroll down to the GitHub Pages section
    • For the Source, set Branch:main and set the folder to /(root) and click Save. This directs GitHub pages to the top-level of your repository for your website content.
    • Scroll back down and click Choose a theme to select a theme for your web page
  • Congratulations, your website is ready. The link will be provided in the GitHub Pages section.
    • NOTE: You may initially receive a 404 error, but after a minute, your website will appear with the content from index.md as the landing page.
    • NOTE2: By default, GitHub Pages expects at least one file in the root folder named index.md. This file becomes the homepage for the web page (i.e. index.md is translated to index.html.

3. Customize pages | What is jekyll?

You may have noticed by now that there is another file (_config.yml) in your root folder that you didn't create or put there. This is your configuration file, and it's written in a language called YAML. The config.yml file was created at the time that you turned on GitHub Pages, and it provides instructions to a static site generator software called jekyll. GitHub pages uses jekyll in the background to convert your Markdown file(s) to formatted HTML to display as web pages.

There is a lot that you can do with jekyll (within GitHub Pages and as a standalone application on your computer) to generate customized webpages. While only the theme information is set in your file initially, there are many ways that you can customize it.
Here, we'll add a few changes to improve your website's functionality and appearance:

  • Use the GitHub editor to open your _config.yml file for editing.
  • Replace the contents of the config.yml file with the text below (by copying and pasting)
title: <your web page title> # EDIT: Fill this in
description: <description of your web page> # EDIT: Fill this in

remote_theme: pmarsceill/just-the-docs # Borrowing the theme from https://github.com/pmarsceill/just-the-docs
github_repo_url: "https://github.com/scds/github-pages" # EDIT: REPLACE WITH THE URL TO YOUR WEBPAGE

# Heading anchor links appear on hover over h1-h6 tags in page content
# allowing users to deep link to a particular heading on a page. (true or false)
heading_anchors: true

# Activate a "Back to top" link
back_to_top: true
back_to_top_text: "Back to top"

# Footer last edited timestamp
last_edit_timestamp: true # show or hide edit time - page must have `last_modified_date` defined in the frontmatter
last_edit_time_format: "%b %e %Y at %I:%M %p" # uses ruby's time format: https://ruby-doc.org/stdlib-2.7.0/libdoc/time/rdoc/Time.html

# A footer with "Edit this page on GitHub" link text
gh_edit_link: true # show or hide edit this page link
gh_edit_link_text: "View this content on GitHub"
gh_edit_repository: "https://github.com/iSci-3A12/intro-github-markdown" # EDIT: ADD THE URL TO YOUR GITHUB REPO
gh_edit_branch: "master" # the branch that your docs is served from
# gh_edit_source: docs # the source that your files originate from
gh_edit_view_mode: "tree" # "tree" or "edit" if you want the user to jump into the editor immediately

# Include plugins for relative links and a remote theme
plugins:
  - jekyll-relative-links
  - jekyll-remote-theme
  • NOTE: The function of each line is explained in comments (i.e. any text on a line that comes after a # symbol.)
  • Edit the information for the four lines tagged with EDIT: in the comments.
  • COMMIT your changes.

4. Embedding videos and other web content

As you've already experienced, the nice thing about GitHub Pages (using jekyll) is that it doesn't just accept Markdown--it also accepts HTML code, meaning that you can insert things like embed codes to insert multimedia content.

  • Find a video on YouTube that you want to embed into your webpage. Once it begins playing, right click and click on Copy embed code. You should have copied to your clipboard something like this:
<iframe width="1487" height="691" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dQw4w9WgXcQ" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
  • Paste the embed code into one of your Markdown documents. COMMIT your changes.
    • NOTE: The embedded video won't show in your rendered Markdown file--it will only appear on your final webpage.
    • NOTE: Remember that it may take a couple of minutes for changes to propagate from your GitHub repo to your webpage.
  • You can do the same with other content that provides embed codes, like Google Slideshows, for example.


**Have your website up and running?** Head to the [fourth and final lesson](lesson4) to learn how to sync this repository between GitHub and your local computer.