This post is part of a series that documents the setup and initial customisation of the drbulu.github.io page and its initial content.

Preamble

After the lengthy process of introspective deliberations regarding whether I would pursue a blog, how I would get started, and why I would even bother, I began looking at some options. After more faffing around, I eventually settled on Github hosting via Github Pages. The reasons were simply:

1. The content was going to be publically visible anyway (view source), so I may as well capitalise on version control.
2. Github hosting is free, and I had frequented many well made pages (wikis mainly) before.
3. The whispered spectre of Jekyll promised fully functional blogging.

In addition, I had some idea what I was info as I had previously setup my personal bio page at drbulu.github.io/drbio (not an active link, this). I since realised that I set this up as a project page and that I would need to expand on this concept to manifest my vision. The reason why I have highlighted this in red is that said address will have to be moved from my bio page repo (a project page) and assimilated into my personal website architecture. This will render the repo @ https://github.com/drbulu/drbio/ obsolete, in which case I will promptly delete it #noCruft.

Resourcing

One of the first places I looked was at Github Pages, and after yet more musing, I realised that Jekyll was the approach to take that would better help me achieve my personal goals. My search for a decent was initially an unhappy one, mainly because I knew that I wanted a website with a blog page, not simply a blog page with an an “about” appendage. I also didn’t want to have to start from scratch with my UI design as I would if I followed the Jekyll quick start guide.

However, the Jekyll sites page Github version, and the illusive one on their home page (seriously?, when you have to ask the Goog, times be rough), turned up some potentially useful sources of inspiration. These were live pages with convenient links to their source code, enabling me to simultaneously test drive their websites and pour through the source to determine how features were implemented. Given the flexibility of Jekyll, the trick wasn’t finding an option or tutorial to get started, it was finding a development route that was best suited to my long term content management goals.

Sites that stood out to me were developmentseed.org (a group of data scientists working on open data), and rsms.me (a photography website with a nice aesthetic).

This sort of content would be helpful towards fine-tuning the look and organisation of my site into the future, however, I still needed a good way to get started. Of the myriad potentially useful tutorials that presumably exist (haven’t checked them out), I spotted one at digitaldrummerj.me, which I really liked. I also stumbled upon one at jmcglone.com, which didn’t seem quite the direction that I wanted to take, but contained some potentially useful information.

Now that I had some resources, I could formulate a strategy to get started and document my progress as I went.