Hosting a Personal Website on GitHub Pages

I recently decided it was time to refresh my personal website. Since I prefer to avoid dealing with virtual servers and hosting maintenance, GitHub Pages has become my go-to solution.

Hosting a personal website on GitHub is a powerful way to establish a professional online presence with minimal cost and maintenance. In this post, I’ll walk you through the key concepts, benefits, and a practical workflow for getting started with GitHub Pages and a simple static site.

Why Use GitHub for Your Personal Website

GitHub offers a feature called GitHub Pages, which can host static websites directly from a repository. This is ideal for personal portfolios, research pages, and blogs written in Markdown.

Key advantages include:

• Free hosting with automatic HTTPS and no bandwidth limits for typical personal use.
• Tight integration with Git: your site is version-controlled, reviewable, and easy to roll back.
• Native support for static site generators like Jekyll, making Markdown-based blogs and documentation straightforward to manage.

Understanding GitHub Pages

GitHub Pages serves HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other static assets from a special branch or repository. For a user site, the repository is typically named username.github.io, and GitHub automatically builds and publishes it.

Important characteristics:

• Content is static: no server-side code such as Python, PHP, or Node.js runs on GitHub Pages.
• Sites can be either user/organization sites (username.github.io) or project-specific sites under any repository.
• Configuration is managed via repository settings and simple configuration files, so most changes are handled through Git commits.

Choosing a Site Structure and Workflow

Before writing content, decide how you want to manage your site:

• For a minimal portfolio, a hand-written HTML page plus a stylesheet may be enough.
• For content-heavy sites or blogs, using a static site generator like Jekyll simplifies layout reuse, navigation, and Markdown-based authoring.
• A hybrid approach often works well: a Jekyll site with separate sections for an “About” page, a research or projects portfolio, and a blog.
• A template-based website can offer more customization options.

1. Simple HTML/CSS/JavaScript

• Create a repository named yourusername.github.io
• Add index.html, CSS, and JS files
• Enable GitHub Pages in Settings
• Your site goes live at https://yourusername.github.io

2. Using Jekyll (GitHub’s Built-in Generator)

• Jekyll is automatically supported by GitHub Pages
• Supports Markdown-based blog posts and pages
• Choose from GitHub’s supported themes (Minima, Hacker, etc.)
• Ideal if you want blogging capabilities

3. Using Pre-built Templates

• Clone a portfolio template repository (like al-folio or others from GitHub Collections)
• Customize with your content
• Deploy with a single push

Key Features Across Approaches

• ✅ Free hosting
• ✅ Free HTTPS
• ✅ Custom domain support (optional)
• ✅ No backend server needed (static sites only)
• ✅ Built-in version control
• ✅ Easy updates via Git

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