Customize

Here we will give you some tips on how to customize the website. One important thing to note is that ALL the changes you make should be done on the main branch of your repository. The gh-pages branch is automatically overwritten every time you make a change to the main branch.

Project structure

The project is structured as follows, focusing on the main components that you will need to modify:

.
├── 📂 assets/: contains the assets that are displayed in the website
│   └── 📂 json/
    │   └── 📄 resume.json: CV in JSON format (https://jsonresume.org/)
├── 📂 _bibliography/
│   └── 📄 papers.bib: bibliography in BibTeX format
├── 📄 _config.yml: the configuration file of the template
├── 📂 _data/: contains some of the data used in the template
│   ├── 📄 cv.yml: CV in YAML format, used when assets/json/resume.json is not found
│   └── 📄 repositories.yml: users and repositories info in YAML format
├── 📂 _includes/: contains code parts that are included in the main HTML file
│   └── 📄 news.liquid: defines the news section layout in the about page
├── 📂 _layouts/: contains the layouts to choose from in the frontmatter of the Markdown files
├── 📂 _news/: the news that will appear in the news section in the about page
├── 📂 _pages/: contains the pages of the website
|   └── 📄 404.md: 404 page (page not found)
├── 📂 _posts/: contains the blog posts
├── 📂 _projects/: contains the projects
└── 📂 _sass/: contains the SASS files that define the style of the website
    ├── 📄 _base.scss: base style of the website
    ├── 📄 _cv.scss: style of the CV page
    ├── 📄 _distill.scss: style of the Distill articles
    ├── 📄 _layout.scss: style of the overall layout
    ├── 📄 _themes.scss: themes colors and a few icons
    └── 📄 _variables.scss: variables used in the SASS files

Configuration

The configuration file _config.yml contains the main configuration of the website. Most of the settings is self-explanatory and we also tried to add as much comments as possible. If you have any questions, please check if it was not already answered in the FAQ.

Note that the url and baseurl settings are used to generate the links of the website, as explained in the install instructions.

All changes made to this file are only visible after you rebuild the website. That means that you need to run bundle exec jekyll serve again if you are running the website locally or push your changes to GitHub if you are using GitHub Pages. All other changes are visible immediately, you only need to refresh the page.

Modifying the CV information

There are currently 2 different ways of generating the CV page content. The first one is by using a json file located in assets/json/resume.json. It is a known standard for creating a CV programmatically. The second one, currently used as a fallback when the json file is not found, is by using a yml file located in _data/cv.yml. This was the original way of creating the CV page content and since it is more human readable than a json file we decided to keep it as an option.

What this means is, if there is no resume data defined in _config.yml and loaded via a json file, it will load the contents of _data/cv.yml. If you want to use the _data/cv.yml file as the source of your CV, you must delete the assets/json/resume.json file.

Modifying the user and repository information

The user and repository information is defined in _data/repositories.yml. You can add as many users and repositories as you want. Both informations are used in the repositories section.

Creating new pages

You can create new pages by adding new Markdown files in the _pages directory. The easiest way to do this is to copy an existing page and modify it. You can choose the layout of the page by changing the layout attribute in the frontmatter of the Markdown file, and also the path to access it by changing the permalink attribute. You can also add new layouts in the _layouts directory if you feel the need for it.

Creating new blog posts

To create a new blog post, you can add a new Markdown file in the _posts directory. The name of the file must follow the format YYYY-MM-DD-title.md. The easiest way to do this is to copy an existing blog post and modify it. Note that some blog posts have optional fields in the frontmatter that are used to enable specific behaviors or functions.

If you want to create blog posts that are not ready to be published, but you want to track it with git, you can create a _drafts directory and store them there.

Creating new projects

You can create new projects by adding new Markdown files in the _projects directory. The easiest way to do this is to copy an existing project and modify it.

Adding some news

You can add news in the about page by adding new Markdown files in the _news directory. There are currently two types of news: inline news and news with a link. News with a link take you to a new page while inline news are displayed directly in the about page. The easiest way to create yours is to copy an existing news and modify it.

Adding Collections

This Jekyll theme implements collections to let you break up your work into categories. The theme comes with two default collections: news and projects. Items from the news collection are automatically displayed on the home page. Items from the projects collection are displayed on a responsive grid on projects page.

You can easily create your own collections, apps, short stories, courses, or whatever your creative work is. To do this, edit the collections in the _config.yml file, create a corresponding folder, and create a landing page for your collection, similar to _pages/projects.md.

Adding a new publication

To add publications create a new entry in the _bibliography/papers.bib file. You can find the BibTeX entry of a publication in Google Scholar by clicking on the quotation marks below the publication title, then clicking on “BibTeX”, or also in the conference page itself. By default, the publications will be sorted by year and the most recent will be displayed first. You can change this behavior and more in the Jekyll Scholar section in _config.yml file.

You can add extra information to a publication, like a PDF file in the assets/pdfs/ directory and add the path to the PDF file in the BibTeX entry with the pdf field. Some of the supported fields are: abstract, altmetric, annotation, arxiv, bibtex_show, blog, code, dimensions, doi, eprint, html, isbn, pdf, pmid, poster, slides, supp, video, and website.

Author annotation

In publications, the author entry for yourself is identified by string array scholar:last_name and string array scholar:first_name in _config.yml. For example, if you have the following entry in your _config.yml:

scholar:
  last_name: [Einstein]
  first_name: [Albert, A.]

If the entry matches one form of the last names and the first names, it will be underlined. Keep meta-information about your co-authors in _data/coauthors.yml and Jekyll will insert links to their webpages automatically. The co-author data format is as follows, with the last names lower cased and without accents as the key:

"adams":
  - firstname: ["Edwin", "E.", "E. P.", "Edwin Plimpton"]
    url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Plimpton_Adams

"podolsky":
  - firstname: ["Boris", "B.", "B. Y.", "Boris Yakovlevich"]
    url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Podolsky

"rosen":
  - firstname: ["Nathan", "N."]
    url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Rosen

"bach":
  - firstname: ["Johann Sebastian", "J. S."]
    url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Sebastian_Bach

  - firstname: ["Carl Philipp Emanuel", "C. P. E."]
    url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Philipp_Emanuel_Bach

If the entry matches one of the combinations of the last names and the first names, it will be highlighted and linked to the url provided. Note that the keys MUST BE lower cased and MUST NOT contain accents. This is because the keys are used to match the last names in the BibTeX entries, considering possible variations.

Buttons (through custom bibtex keywords)

There are several custom bibtex keywords that you can use to affect how the entries are displayed on the webpage:

  • abbr: Adds an abbreviation to the left of the entry. You can add links to these by creating a venue.yaml-file in the _data folder and adding entries that match.
  • abstract: Adds an “Abs” button that expands a hidden text field when clicked to show the abstract text
  • altmetric: Adds an Altmetric badge (Note: if DOI is provided just use true, otherwise only add the altmetric identifier here - the link is generated automatically)
  • annotation: Adds a popover info message to the end of the author list that can potentially be used to clarify superscripts. HTML is allowed.
  • arxiv: Adds a link to the Arxiv website (Note: only add the arxiv identifier here - the link is generated automatically)
  • bibtex_show: Adds a “Bib” button that expands a hidden text field with the full bibliography entry
  • blog: Adds a “Blog” button redirecting to the specified link
  • code: Adds a “Code” button redirecting to the specified link
  • dimensions: Adds a Dimensions badge (Note: if DOI or PMID is provided just use true, otherwise only add the Dimensions’ identifier here - the link is generated automatically)
  • html: Inserts an “HTML” button redirecting to the user-specified link
  • pdf: Adds a “PDF” button redirecting to a specified file (if a full link is not specified, the file will be assumed to be placed in the /assets/pdf/ directory)
  • poster: Adds a “Poster” button redirecting to a specified file (if a full link is not specified, the file will be assumed to be placed in the /assets/pdf/ directory)
  • slides: Adds a “Slides” button redirecting to a specified file (if a full link is not specified, the file will be assumed to be placed in the /assets/pdf/ directory)
  • supp: Adds a “Supp” button to a specified file (if a full link is not specified, the file will be assumed to be placed in the /assets/pdf/ directory)
  • website: Adds a “Website” button redirecting to the specified link

You can implement your own buttons by editing the _layouts/bib.liquid file.

Changing theme color

A variety of beautiful theme colors have been selected for you to choose from. The default is purple, but you can quickly change it by editing the --global-theme-color variable in the _sass/_themes.scss file. Other color variables are listed there as well. The stock theme color options available can be found at _sass/_variables.scss. You can also add your own colors to this file assigning each a name for ease of use across the template.

Adding social media information

You can add your social media links by adding the specified information at the Social integration section in the _config.yml file. This information will appear at the bottom of the About page.

Adding a newsletter

You can add a newsletter subscription form by adding the specified information at the newsletter section in the _config.yml file. To set up a newsletter, you can use a service like Loops.so, which is the current supported solution. Once you have set up your newsletter, you can add the form endpoint to the endpoint field in the newsletter section of the _config.yml file.

Depending on your specified footer behavior, the sign up form either will appear at the bottom of the About page and at the bottom of blogposts if related_posts are enabled, or in the footer at the bottom of each page.

Adding Token for Lighthouse Badger

To add secrets for lighthouse-badger, create a personal access token (PAT) and add it as a secret named LIGHTHOUSE_BADGER_TOKEN to your repository. The lighthouse-badger documentation specifies using an environment variable, but using it as a secret is more secure and appropriate for a PAT.

Also In case you face the error: “Input required and not supplied: token” in the Lighthouse Badger action, this solution resolves it.

Personal Access Token (fine-grained) Permissions for Lighthouse Badger:

  • contents: access: read and write
  • metadata: access: read-only

Due to the necessary permissions (PAT and others mentioned above), it is recommended to use it as a secret rather than an environment variable.

Customizing fonts, spacing, and more

You can customize the fonts, spacing, and more by editing _sass/_base.scss. The easiest way to try in advance the changes is by using chrome dev tools or firefox dev tools. In there you can click in the element and find all the attributes that are set for that element and where are they. For more information on how to use this, check chrome and firefox how-tos, and this tutorial.

Scheduled Posts

al-folio contains a workflow which automatically publishes all posts scheduled at a specific day, at the end of the day (23:30). By default the action is disabled, and to enable it you need to go to .github/workflows/ and find the file called schedule-posts.txt. This is the workflow file. For GitHub to recognize it as one (or to enable the action), you need to rename it to schedule-posts.yml.

In order to use this you need to save all of your “Completed” blog posts which are scheduled to be uploaded on a specific date, in a folder named _scheduled/ in the root directory.

Incomplete posts should be saved in _drafts/

Name Format

In this folder you need to store your file in the same format as you would in _posts/

Example file name: 2024-08-26-This file will be uploaded on 26 August.md

Important Notes

  • The scheduler uploads posts everyday at 🕛 23:30 UTC
  • It will only upload posts at 23:30 UTC of their respective scheduled days, It’s not uploaded in 23:59 in case there are a lot of files as the scheduler must finish before 00:00
  • It will only upload files which follow the pattern yyyy-mm-dd-title.md
    • This means that only markdown files will be posted
    • It means that any markdown which do not follow this pattern will not be posted
  • The scheduler works by moving posts from the _scheduled/ directory to _posts/, it will not post to folders like _projects/ or _news/
  • The date in the name of the file is the day that file will be uploaded on
    • 2024-08-27-file1.md will not be posted before or after 27-August-2024 (Scheduler only works for posts scheduled on the present day)
    • 2025-08-27-file2.md will be posted exactly on 27-August-2025
    • File3.md will not be posted at all
    • 2026-02-31-file4.md is supposed to be posted on 31-February-2026, but there is no 31st in February hence this file will never be posted either