Author: Thinker
Reviewer: I

Would you like to have a blog or résumé website of your own? In a corner of the internet that belongs to us, we are free to use our imagination and build a world unlike any other. This article will show you how to create a personal blog or résumé site very quickly and very easily.

Create a GitHub Account

What is GitHub? GitHub is an open-source code-hosting platform where users can share and manage projects. If you do not yet have a GitHub account, this section will guide you through creating one. If you already have an account, skip ahead to the next section.

How Do I Sign Up for GitHub?

  1. Open the GitHub website
    First, open your browser and go to GitHub at https://github.com/.
  2. Complete the registration form
    On the GitHub home page, click “Sign up” in the upper-right corner to open the registration page. You will need to provide a username, an email address, and a password. Make sure the email address is valid, because you will need to verify your account by email. Once you have filled in the form, click “Create an account.”
  3. Verify your email address
    After you complete the second step, GitHub will send a verification message to the email address you provided. Open that message and click “Verify email address” to finish the process.

Choose a Template Project

If the ideas of a personal blog and a résumé website are unfamiliar, here are two common templates as examples:

  1. Personal academic résumé:
    https://github.com/academicpages/academicpages.github.io
    The static interface looks like this:
image.png
  1. Blog:
    https://github.com/klovien/klovien.github.io
    The static interface looks like this:
image.png

Create Your Personal Website

Open the project you selected in the previous section. Using the academic résumé template as our example, you will find a “Fork” button in the upper-right corner of the project page:

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After clicking Fork, go to the repository you have just forked. Open its settings and rename the repository to yourusername.github.io, where yourusername is your GitHub account name.

Note: .github.io is required. Replace only yourusername.

image.png

Customize the Site

Enter yourusername.github.io in your browser, replacing yourusername with your GitHub account name, to open your website. Using the academic résumé site as an example, the project description—the README file—explains how to customize it:

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Here is an example of those instructions:

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For example, if you want to change one of the pages, open the corresponding file in your project and click the edit button:

image.png

After editing and personalizing the page, click Commit to submit your changes. Wait a little while for the site to finish deploying, then reload it; your changes should now be visible.

image.png

You can also upload your own files, such as PDFs and images; the project’s README explains how. From here, all you need to do is keep exploring the template and learning how its styles work. Before long, you will have built an academic résumé website of your own.

Can I use my own domain name?
You would need to purchase a domain, so that option is not free and is beyond the scope of this article.