Technical Portfolio

Personal portfolio site for PhD applications, built with Jekyll and hosted on GitHub Pages.

Live site: https://tystowell.github.io/

Publishing (one-time setup)

1. Push this repo to GitHub.
2. On GitHub, go to Settings → Pages.
3. Under Build and deployment, set Source to Deploy from a branch, then pick branch main and folder / (root).
4. Wait a minute. The site builds itself on every push after that.

The repo is named tystowell.github.io, so the site is served at the root URL and baseurl in _config.yml is "". If the repo is ever renamed, set baseurl: /<repo-name>.

Adding a project

1. Copy _templates/project.md to _projects/<short-name>.md. The file name becomes the URL (/work/<short-name>/).
2. Fill in the front matter (title, summary, category and date are required) and write the page in Markdown. date is the start date. Every list on the site is sorted by it, newest first.
3. Put images in assets/img/projects/ and reference them as /assets/img/projects/foo.png in thumbnail: / hero:. Inside Markdown, write ![caption]({{ '/assets/img/projects/foo.png' | relative_url }}).
4. Commit and push.

The project then shows up automatically in:

• the All work carousel on the home page (newest first),
• the filterable grid on /work/,
• the Jump to… sidebar and Newer / Older links on every project page,
• Highlights on the home page, if you set featured: true.

Useful front matter:

Field	What it does
featured: true	Show as a large card in Highlights on the home page
math: true	Enables LaTeX via MathJax: $inline$ and $$display$$
embed: <url>	Embeds an iframe at the top of the page. Good for games hosted on GitHub Pages
embed_size: [w, h]	For fixed-size pages (like a game canvas): renders at that size and scales it to fit
links:	Buttons under the title (icon: can be github, file, play, external)
tools:	Tag pills on cards and the page

Customizing

File	Controls
_config.yml	Name, tagline, intro text, contact links, CV path
_data/categories.yml	Categories, their groups (Research / Personal Projects) and colors
_data/navigation.yml	Top navigation links
_data/publications.yml	Papers, posters and talks on the About page
about.md	About page intro and research interests
_data/resume.yml	About page résumé: education, experience, student teams, skills
assets/css/main.css	All styling. Colors and fonts are CSS variables at the top

CV: drop your PDF at assets/files/cv.pdf and set cv: /assets/files/cv.pdf in _config.yml.

Previewing locally (optional)

You need Ruby 3.x (macOS ships 2.6, which is too old; install a newer one with brew install ruby):

bundle install
bundle exec jekyll serve --livereload
# open http://localhost:4000/TechnicalPortfolio/