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Academic Pages

A free GitHub Pages template for building an academic or portfolio personal website.academicpages/academicpages.github.io

GitHub Download v0.9
Stars
17.8k
Forks
9.8k
Licence
MIT
Language
SCSS
Last update
4 days ago
Type
Other

What it is

Academic Pages is a template for making a personal or professional portfolio website and hosting it free on GitHub Pages. You copy the template into your own repository, edit a configuration file and Markdown content files, and GitHub builds and publishes the site at your username's github.io address. It is built on Jekyll, a static site generator, and is aimed at people who want an academic-style homepage without writing a website from scratch.

  • Publish a personal homepage at your username.github.io with a configured url and repository in _config.yml
  • Share PDFs or other files by placing them in the files/ directory
  • Generate publication and talk pages from a TSV file using the scripts in the markdown_generator folder
  • Preview changes locally with Jekyll before pushing to GitHub

Great for

  • Academics who want a personal homepage listing publications and talks
  • Researchers and grad students who are comfortable editing text files
  • Professionals who want a simple portfolio site hosted for free on GitHub
  • Anyone willing to follow a setup guide and edit YAML and Markdown

Not ideal for

  • People who want a no-code website builder, since setup requires editing config and Markdown files and using GitHub
  • Anyone who needs a dynamic site with a database or user accounts, since GitHub Pages hosts static sites only
  • Developers wanting a heavily customized design, because the README notes that merging upstream template updates into a customized copy can cause conflicts
Step-by-step guide: how to use Academic PagesInstall, first run, examples, tips and FAQs

How to get it

  1. 1

    Clone and build from source

    You'll need: Git · Ruby with ruby-dev and bundler (for local preview) · Node.js (for local preview) · Docker (optional, for the Docker route)

    Install local dependencies on Debian/Ubuntu/WSL

    sudo apt install ruby-dev ruby-bundler nodejs

    Install Ruby gems

    bundle install

    Serve the site locally

    jekyll serve -l -H localhost

    Run with Docker

    docker compose up
  2. 2

    Run it

    • Click 'Use this template' on the GitHub repository and name the new repo your-username.github.io
    • Edit _config.yml so url and repository match your site
    • Add your content and upload any files to the files/ directory
    • In repository settings, go to Pages and set Source to GitHub Actions
    • Optionally run jekyll serve and open localhost:4000 to preview
  3. 3

    Get the most out of it

    • Use the markdown_generator scripts to build publication and talk pages from a TSV file
    • Upload PDFs and other files to files/ so they get public URLs
    • Use the Docker or VS Code Dev Container setup if local Ruby installation is difficult
    • Read the linked tutorial by Jay Robert Williams for a walkthrough of the template

Downloads

Source code (.zip)master branch · straight from GitHubRelease v0.9Release notes and sourceOfficial website & docsacademicpages.github.io

Strengths

  • Free hosting through GitHub Pages with no separate server to run
  • Built-in optional generation of publication and talk pages from a spreadsheet-style TSV file
  • Provides a local preview option, including Docker and VS Code Dev Container setups

Trade-offs

  • Requires a GitHub account, confirmed email, and comfort with editing config and Markdown files
  • Updating from the upstream template after customizing it can cause merge conflicts, per the README
  • The README is truncated here, so details beyond the setup steps are unclear from this analysis

How it compares

ProjectStarsTypeLevelUpdatedBest for
academicpages.github.io (this)17.8kOtherbeginner4 days agoAcademics who want a personal homepage listing publications and talks
al-folio16.3kAppintermediate11 days agoAcademics and researchers who want a personal website with a clean, responsive layout
minimal-mistakes13.6kLibraryintermediate28 days agoPeople who want a personal site or blog built with Jekyll
jekyll-theme-chirpy10.3kLibraryintermediate2 months agoDevelopers who want a technical blog without designing a site from scratch
jekyll51.7kDev toolintermediate23 days agoDevelopers who want a blog or simple website built from plain text files
docsify31.6kDev toolbeginner4 days agoOpen-source maintainers who want a documentation site from existing Markdown files

Stats synced from GitHub. The assessment above was drafted with AI from the project's README on 2026-10-29 and may miss recent changes — check the README before relying on a command. MIT licence: free to use, modify and distribute, including commercially, as long as you keep the copyright notice.