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Personal Website — Setup & Deploy Guide

This uses GitHub Pages + Jekyll. Jekyll turns plain Markdown files into a styled website automatically — you write content, GitHub builds the actual HTML/CSS for you on every push. No local build tools needed.

Step 1: Create a special repository

GitHub Pages treats one specific repo name as your personal site’s root URL.

  1. Go to https://github.com/new
  2. Name it exactly: pranitidumb.github.io (your GitHub username + .github.io — this exact naming is what makes it your main site URL instead of a project sub-page)
  3. Public, no README initialization (same as before)
  4. Click Create repository

Step 2: Add these files to your project folder

Take the files I’ve generated (_config.yml, index.md, blog.md, reading-list.md, and the _posts folder) and put them in a new local folder, e.g. ~/Desktop/personal-website.

Step 3: Push it to GitHub

Same flow as your book recommender:

cd ~/Desktop/personal-website
git init
git add .
git commit -m "Initial site"
git remote add origin https://github.com/pranitidumb/pranitidumb.github.io.git
git branch -M main
git push -u origin main

Step 4: Enable GitHub Pages

  1. On your repo’s GitHub page, click Settings
  2. In the left sidebar, click Pages
  3. Under “Build and deployment” → Source, select “Deploy from a branch”
  4. Branch: main, folder: / (root) — click Save

Step 5: Wait and visit your site

Give it 1-2 minutes for the first build. Then visit:

https://pranitidumb.github.io

If it 404s at first, wait another minute and refresh — the very first deploy is sometimes slower than later updates.

How to edit each part going forward

Portfolio (home page): edit index.md directly — replace the placeholder bullet points with your real projects and bio.

Add a blog post: create a new file in _posts/, named YYYY-MM-DD-your-title.md (the date matters — it controls sorting and the post’s URL). Copy the front matter format from the sample post.

Reading list: edit reading-list.md — it’s just a Markdown list, add or remove books freely.

After any edit, push it live the same way:

git add .
git commit -m "describe what you changed"
git push

GitHub rebuilds automatically within a minute or so.

Customizing further