Github Pages, Part One - Simple Setup (with pictures!)

The blog formerly known as TheOddDolphin stumbles into IdeaTown. Weak, and hungry, it staggers into the town square, looking for something that will sate its unending thirst. "Content," it mumbles under its breath. "Need... content." All of a sudden, it spies the perfect target. Easy to demonstrate, simple to write about, extensive support framework so that the blog itself doesn't need to deal with reader's queries. Tongue lolling, the now actively salivating blog runs off behind the topic of Github Pages, knives out and ready to make a sacrifice to its strange and oppressive god.

In this new series of posts, I intend to run through the development and deployment of a static website on Github Pages, mostly to remove some of the taboos surrounding static website development, which I believe can be as good as (and sometimes more suitable than) dynamic websites for web pages in certain cases.

I also want to make fellow college students aware that something like Github Pages even exists. Too long have I watched them pay incredible amounts of money for hosting. I want them to know that with Github Pages, they can finally make a page that's as stripped down, simplified, and easy to load as their wallets.

EDIT: I think it would also be suitable to note here that Bitbucket, another popular repository hosting site, also offers the same hosting service. The major difference is that Bitbucket repos are private, and allow only up to 10 contributors in their free plan. I have used Github Pages here, but feel free to take a look at this page for instructions on how to set up a Bitbucket website.

The purpose of this introductory post is to run you through the setting up and initialisation of a PERSONAL Github Pages repository, something which the official Github Pages page already does more than admirably, so if you're looking for a good tutorial, follow that instead. If, for some reason, you find that tutorial too hard to follow, then this guide is fine, I guess. I'm mostly just setting up the scene for other stuff later, so if you're interested in the rest of this series of posts, then I suggest you follow along with this as well.

Setting up a Repository

The first thing you're supposed to do on your path towards greatness is set up a Github repository. Go to Github, create an account, and then create a repository. The name of the repository must, for some reason, be <your-username>.github.io, and this will also end up[ becoming the url for your Github Page website, so if you picked a silly username when creating your account, feel free to kick yourself now.

Below are the options I ended up with - nothing really new here. Note that I chose not to initialise the repository with a README.md, which isn't really standard practice. If this is your first experience with Git, I suggest you do so.

Get Git on the command line

This is really more of an intermediary step than anything, but it is critical that you actually have Git in order to work with Github Pages - it's the version control software through which all updates to your potential website will be maintained.

Ubuntu users, as always, have the handy apt-get command:

sudo apt-get install git

Whereas Windows users will have to get the immensely useful Git Bash.

If you're a Mac user, you are probably rich enough to pay for hosting will have to take a look at an external resource to find out how to install Git, like this one.

Clone the repository you just created

If you carried out the previous step correctly, then this one is fairly easy. Navigate to a preferred storage location on your hard disk, and clone the repository onto your hard disk. If you installed git properly, this is the command you must put into your bash terminal:

git clone https://github.com/<your-username>/<your-username>.github.io.git

Here's what I had to input, for example:

git clone https://github.com/clennam/clennam.github.io.git

Create a test file 

Now you've cloned the repo into your hard drive. You shouldn't have much in there already, seeing as you just cloned an empty repo.

Create a simple html file, so that we can push it and see if our brand new site works as advertised. You could open a text editor, create an html file, and save it into the repository folder, but you can simplify all this into one step on Ubuntu and Windows by doing this right from the command line:

echo message > filename.html

Or, in my case:

echo This is a test message > index.html

Commit and push the files

Our setup is all done, it is now time to push the files to the local git repository, and from there, send them to the online repository that we created.

This is really simple in practice, although there is quite a bit of complex theory behind it. The commands you need to run, in order, are:

git add .
git commit -m "Initial commit"
git push -u origin master 

 yey.jpg (ironically, the picture attached is a .png)

You're all done! Check if your new site is set up properly by going to the URL <your-username>.github.io. Here's what I got:

Take it as a keepsake of our beautiful time together.

Watch this blog for the next post in this series, in which I continue exploring the possibilities of this platform.

Resurrection, or: Regarding my Blog's Change of Name

In the forgotten city of blogspot.com, an ancient mystery stirs. An odd, dolphin-like monstrosity rises above the murky deep, and shakes itself off like a grotesque, wet dog. A disgusting hybrid monster, long dormant, finally awakened by the cruel whims of some capricious creator. It moans in pain, the pain of existence as much as the pain of this chafing rubber dolphin head. The monster is just some guy wearing a dolphin head, of a kind that probably briefly became popular after the death of Sharknado as a meme and before the birth of Horse Head Mask. He discards the shark pun and sets off into the sunset to wreak havoc upon the world once more, pensively stroking a book of Dickensian literature. "Little Dorrit? Nah, too mainstream," opines the former monster. "Oh, what about-"

My blog's changing it's name from The Odd Dolphin to Clennam's Compendium.

Why, you ask? Well, I've been rebranding everything else I have from TheOddDolphin to Clennam, because Clennam's Compendium just sounds more pretentiously appropriate than a shark pun. The Odd Dolphin, cuz it's a shark, geddit? Ugh. >:(

A lot's happened since my last post. I picked up an internship job at Virtusa! Not quite gamedev royalty, but I will undoubtedly learn valuable skills in the year I'll be there.

As usual, I only do a daily update when I have a slew of posts to put up (defeating the daily part of the label, but introducing a great mechanism of suspense, because I am nothing if not an artful writer). You, dear reader, should see the first of these posts soon.