basicpage.github.io

Template for a basic academic page that is ready to use and easy to customise.

It is also responsive by default!

It relies on FontAwesome and Academicons to display nice icons.

It is close in style to academicpages but is entirely independent.

Getting started

• Create a Github account if you don't have one.
• Click on Use this template and then create a new repository called [your username].github.io, a bit like this repo is called basicpage.github.io. This will also be the address of your website.

Note

If you don't have Github Pro (which you can get with the students programme) then your repository must be public for it to work.

• Now go to the repository "Settings" then click "Pages" on the left and select "Github Actions" instead of "Deploy from a branch" for "Source".

  

• Fill the contents of index.md to your liking and it should just work.

Options

The index.md file starts with a header. All the items in it are optional. For instance, if you remove the line

picture: img/profile.png

then the website will no longer contain a picture. We think it's better to have a picture, but it's your choice.

The same goes for email and so on.

We give the semantics of the various fields (all of whom are optional).

General

• title: Title for your page, it will appear in the tab (metadata).

• author: Typically your name. It will appear in the page and as metadata.

• shortbio: Some form of subtitle where you can present yourself in a few words. It will appear below your name.

• email: Your email. It will appear next to an envelope in monospace font.

• location: Information about your location (university, office, …). It will appear next to a pin icon.

• picture: A path (relative or absolute) to the profile picture.

• picture-round: A Boolean (true or false) deciding whether your profile picture is rounded or left as a square. By default, it is square.

• side-by-side: A Boolean deciding whether the picture and the rest of the header are side by side on larger screens. By default, it's all on top of each other, like on smaller screens.

• pronouns: A string to show your pronouns.

• footer: Some data to put in the footer of the page. You can use it to put some disclaimer, or maybe to advertise basicpage. ☺️ If nothing is provided, then the footer doesn't appear, and thus the horizontal that precedes is will not show either.

OpenGraph

OpenGraph carries information that used by social media and messaging app to display your links nicely, typically with the picture and a small description.

• description-meta: Description of the page to appear in the metadata and in the OpenGraph data.

• og-url: This should be a full URL (starting with http or https) to your website. This is required by the format.

• og-picture: A full URL (starting with http or https) linking to a picture to display.

Social and academic accounts

• orcid: Your ORCID number (in the shape 0000-0000-0000-0000).

• dblp: URL to your DBLP page.

• scholar: URL to your Google Scholar page.

• hal: URL to your HAL page.

• github: Username to your Github account.

• gitlab: Username to your Gitlab account.

• bitbucket: URL to your BitBucket account.

• mastodon: URL to your Mastodon account.

• bluesky: URL to your BlueSky account.

• linkedin: URL to your LinkedIn account.

Papers

We provide some tools to input your publications and drafts either in JSON or YAML formats.

For instance:

``` yaml {.paper}
title: Yet another yaml parser 3
authors: Templato Urnehm
venue: Proceedings of Nihilism
url: https://basicpage.github.io
year: 2029
files:
  - text: Paper
    type: pdf
    scr: foo.pdf
  - text: Bibtex
    type: bib
    src: foo.bib
```

or

```json {.paper}
"title": "Towards automatic academic pages",
"authors": "Templato Urnehm, U. N. Owen",
"venue": "Principles of Awesomeness (PAW)",
"year": "2023",
"url": "https://basicpage.github.io",
"files": [
  { "text": "Paper", "type": "pdf", "src": "foo.pdf" },
  { "text": "Bibtex", "type": "bib", "src": "foo.bib" },
  { "text": "Formalisation", "type": "code", "src": "foo.v" }
]
```

Warning

Make sure to respect JSON syntax, in particular place commas where they are needed, and only there. Test locally before you push.

Tip

You can input multiple files at once by using papers (with an s) instead of paper. In that case, papers must be bracketed properly, and the way to do so differs in YAML and JSON. Have a look at index.md to see how it's done.

The file that handles papers is pandoc/paper.lua and you may modify it to suit your needs. Currently, it expects the fields title and authors (it will assume them to be empty otherwise), while the other fields (venue, year, url and files) are optional.

• title: Title of your paper. Will be used as header of the block.
• authors: List of authors.
• venue (optional): Journal or conference.
• year (optional): Date of the conference, if present it is going to be in parentheses after the venue (unless the venue is absent in which case it will be alone on its line without parentheses). A more precise date is possible, in the end this is just treated as a string.
• url (optional): If present, the header will also be a link pointing to the provided URL.
• files (optional): A list of files that will be presented as links on one line with an icon depending on the file type. Each item must contain the following fields that will be assumed empty if absent:
  • text: Text that will appear.
  • src: URL to the file, it can be local.
  • type: Type of file. If no value is present, then the icon will be that of an undifferentiated file. The possible values are:
    • pdf
    • bib
    • code
    • video
    • txt
    • img
    • zip
    • slides
    • link
    • git

Updating the HTML template

The pandoc/template.html4 file contains an HTML template which you can edit to suit your taste. Any variable mentioned in the header of your index.md can be moved around, and you can even add your own.

There is also a special filter called pandoc/date.lua which produces an extra variable called date (unless it is already provided in the header) that is currently used in the footer of the template to indicate the last time the page was generated.

Note

It will only appear in the footer if the footer variable is set.

Sharing files

Anything you put in the website directory will be available online too. For instance, you can add PDF of your papers and so on and then link them (or not) from index.md.

Authors

• Yannick Forster
• Théo Winterhalter