Deploy to username.github.io

[d-alex-hughes]

As you've built this currently, the ./bin/deploy deploys to a gh-page branch on a user's project repo. But, since the (really handsome!) theme you've built is directed toward academic users, I'm not sure this is really meeting the use case -- single users can only host on their master branch, per the documentation.

I had thought about switching default branches? Perhaps making a source branch the default that includes all the _site and _pages and _config.yml etc. content and a master branch that includes only the resulting files and structure within _site? But then, I couldn't get it deploying.

So, the issue, probably labeled an enhancement, is -

• Can a secondary deploy script be written that builds and deploys toward a user who has to host at a username.github.io site?

[alshedivat]

Good point. I personally don't use GitHub pages to host my own homepage, so never thought about that (also it makes more sense for me to keep the al-folio demo page as a project). I will fix this in the next update (or feel free to open a PR that improves the deploy script and I will be happy to merge it).

[andreasvlachos]

Thanks for the good work in this, great template! Just to say that it would great to have the option to have it deployed on username.github.io. I got it working without the deploy script, but this meant loosing the capability of jekyll-scholar. Thanks again!

[d-alex-hughes]

I wound up writing a little patch for my specific issue. In essence, I cloned the repo, and then built a parallel repo that was for serving the website on a username.github.io site. After building the jekyll site, inside the base repo, I copy over to the serving repo, and push.

So, the tree is something like:

   |- username.github.io
    |- assets
    |- bin
    |- blog
   |- al-folio
    |- _bibliography
    |- _bin
    |- ... 

And the serve shell script, located in al-folio/_bin/send is:

#!/usr/bin/env sh

echo "starting to build site" 

# build site files in website 
bundle exec jekyll build
git add -A
git commit -m 'updating site'
git push origin master

# copy files into serving site folder
cp -r _site/* ../username.github.io

# move to serving folder 
cd ../username.github.io
git add -A
git commit -m 'updating site'
git push origin master

echo "finished building site" 

I didn't want to issue a pull request for this, because it is kind of far outside the use case that you've built toward.

[andreasvlachos]

Hi D. Alex,

Thanks for sharing! I will give it a go next time I update my website!

Cheers,
Andreas

[nadnaps]

Hi everyone,

I have an additional issue along the same lines. When i run the server locally, everything seems fine as you can see in the screenshot below.

However, when i host it onto github, the layout changes (see screenshot below) . I am guessing its something very trivial which i am unable to figure out. Any help here ?

[alshedivat]

The deploy script now has --user flag that makes it deploy to master and keep the source code in source. Alternatively, you can specify explicitly source and deploy branches using --source and --deploy flags.

@nadnaps make sure url and baseurl field in _config.yml are correctly specified; url should point to <your-username>.github.io and baseurl should typically be empty.

[timothyhibbard]

Hi. I updatedthe _config.yml with my url and left the baseurl empty as directed. and the about page runs beautifully, but the other pages, "publications" "projects" and "teaching" are only showing html, just like the about page did before I made the baseurl empty. Possible solution?

Thanks! I'm sure it's something simple.

[alshedivat]

@timothyhibbard Interesting, haven't seen this bug before. What happens if you leave url blank?

Basically, the paths of CSS and JS resources got messed up. In your case, it looks like the url gets duplicated for some mysterious reason (i.e., the path your page tries to access CSS and JS has the following form: http://<url>/<url>/<path-to-the-resource>). This might be due to using a custom domain with GitHub pages (never tried that myself). For you reference, the line that generates the loading path for main.css is here (for other resources, check out _includes/head.html and _includes/hemline.html).

If you figure out what causes the problem, please do let me know, and I'll update the README.

[timothyhibbard]

That worked! I just went back into the _config.yml file and made the url blank as well, and that cleared it all up! Thank you so much!

[shivampotdar]

Hey! I certainly feel @d-alex-hughes script is very useful, it does work very easily even for custom domain, given that you have CNAME in the username.github.io repo. Also please note that in this case, both url and base_url in_config.yml should be empty to render the themes correctly even if you have custom domain.
Thanks Alex :)