Githubpages easy, free blogging site 1

Posted by swapan chakrabarty on March 28, 2022

I’ve always wanted to create a technology blog but never did because i’m very lazy and setting up and maintaining such an endevor seemed so difficult. Then i looked into Github pages and realized how simple and no-cost it can be to run my own technology site. I I will try to keep the information as streamlined as possible. The steps below should have your blog up and running in less than 10 minutes and has $0 in associated costs forever.

Create a free Github account

https://github.com

Use this template to start your Github pages free site/blog

Blogging/site template repo

your repo name should be githubname + github.io.

  • for example:
  • The first part ‘jetsfan1’ is the github account name.
  • jetsfan1.github.io is the name of the repo that was choosen.
  • this triggers Github to atomaticlaly generate a blog based on the contents of this repo.

github pages example 1

update the following files directly in Github in the repo created from the template

commit changes to both files below directly in Github

  • open _config and update the following:
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SEOTitle: Datahawk blog
header-img: img/home-bg.jpg
email:
description: "Datahawk blog"
keyword: "openshift data"
url: "https://swapan-datahawklab.github.io/"
...
...
github_username:    jetsfan1.github.io

for example, for jetsfan1.github.io the following entries would be updated:

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SEOTitle: a blog about football
header-img: img/home-bg.jpg
email:
description: "football blog"
keyword: "useless football info"
url: "https://jetsfan1.github.io/"
  • open about.html and update the text in the following section to put in info about yourself
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<div class="en post-container">

Open your published blog at https://yourgithubname.github.io

  • since you commmited changes to your repo and you set the repo name to yourgithaccount.github.io
    • your blog/site was automatically published to https://yourgithaccount.github.io.
  • this is the one generated for this template repo. your’s will look the same but have a different URL as listed above. https://swapan-datahawklab.github.io/

make changes and immediately refresh your blog

  • in _posts, edit and alter any of the posts and commit your change
  • your changes should be refreshed and viewable in your blog a few minutes after your commit is done.

Upcoming additions to this post

  • How to link a custom domain of your choosing to your github pages blog/site.
  • in the upcoming updates to this post, i’ll be adding info on how to add images very easily and have them easily github.
  • I’ll also post instructions on how to link a free discus account to your blog so that your readers can post messages.