For my first entry, it’s only fitting to disclose how this blog was setup. Previously, I was aware that this can be done using GitHub Pages, but it was only this weekend that I decided to sit down and do this.

The blog setup consists of 2 core steps: Setup and Customization. Obviously, Setup is necessary whereas Customization is not due to the list of default themes provided by GitHub.

Setup

In Setup, you will need a GitHub account to create a new GitHub repository named username.github.io where username refers to your Github username.

Your site should then be found at http://username.github.io

To make the site less blank, you can then launch the automatic page generator (found under Settings > GitHub Pages: Launch automatic page generator).

Customize

In my cause, I didn’t like the selection in the automatic page generator. I wanted something different and so I turned to Jekyll, a simple, blog-aware static site generator supported by GitHub Pages.

Initially, I needed to download jekyll:

~ $ gem install jekyll

To test jekyll, I followed jekyll’s quick-start guide and did:

~ $ jekyll new myblog
~ $ cd myblog
~/myblog $ jekyll serve

Going to http://localhost:4000 would then present a preview of the new site.

A different theme

To customize the theme, I picked clean blog from jekyllthemes.org

A different header

To customize the header image, I used an image from Ryan McGuire’s collection. In an article by Casey Ark, other amazing free stock photo websites can be found.

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