Neighbors - Static Site

Static GitHub Site

When I started working on projects locally, I was keeping them in folders on my desktop. I decided that I would create a website to post these projects, and seeing that GitHub allows you to host a static website for free, it was an obvious choice.

I used a template generator called Initializr. It allows you to download a new HTML5 boilerplate template in either Classic, Responsive, or Bootstrap; I customized the options before downloading my template. After unzipping the package, I updated several of the files to be my own and represent the site I wanted to build. I created the favicon for the site using Real Favicon Generator, which creates the images and favicon required for several devices, including mobile. After I dropped in the HTML and JS files for the home page, bio page, and some of the HTML5 Canvas games that I had worked on, I initialized the project as a new GitHub project using GitHub Desktop.

GitHub provides great documentation for starting a static sites at GitHub Pages. You only need to create a new repository with the username of your account ending with .github.io. Then, clone the repository to your local machine. After completing these steps I copied the Initializr project into the repo and pushed the changes into GitHub using GitHub Desktop. In the repository settings, you can customize several features, security alerts, set a custom domain, and enable HTTPS.

I purchased and set up a custom domain using Google Domains, including setting up the CNAME to point to the GitHub repo, email domain key for ProtonMail, and other records required for the DNS.

Since setting up this static site, I work on the projects locally, commit the changes with GitHub Desktop, and GitHub automatically pushes the changes to the static site, up to a couple of times a day.