How I started...

In the true nature of why I started this blog, I’m going to document how to get started. But first, bare with me while I give you the “why I started doing this” memo…

So, I started this because I’ve been an engineer for all but 9 months now and have had my fair amount of struggles getting started. Plus, I’m in a leadership position where I interview more experienced individuals and it seems like everyone has a site similar to this. And now, this is me giving back. I’m going to document code I write, things I learn, and just general thoughts as I go. Ok, thanks for sticking through this…

Here are the steps to create the site (I used a Mac so command lines may differ between platforms):

1. Create a GitHub account if you haven’t already. It’s free, so no issue.
2. Create a new repository following this format: username.github.io
3. Clone the repository (where username is what you defined in step 2)

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

4. Fork/Clone the jalpc_jekyll_theme repository:

     $ git clone https://github.com/<your githubname>/jalpc_jekyll_theme.git
   

5. Navigate into the forked/cloned repository and download jekyll

     $ gem install jekyll bundler
   

6. Now copy the contents of the jekyll clone and put in the repository you created in step 1
7. Check in all the code and GitHub will host the site for you.

It’s that simple. Now have fun and customize to your needs. Some tips:

1. Blogs are stored in the _posts directory.
2. Site html code (which really doesn’t need to be touched unless you want to change it) is in the _site directory.
3. All main page documentation is the _config.yml file
4. If your main pages aren’t taking place, I had to modify the html because it was pointing to a JSON file. This was in the _site/blog/index.html file.
5. To run and refresh your build locally, run jekyll serve --watch