Xinchejian.github.io

xinchejian.com using jekyll

References

• https://github.com/jekyll/jekyll

Motivation

xinchejian.com is backed by Wordpress.

Wordpress is currently used to publish our promotional content.

Pros:

• It's easy to use
• well known software

Cons:

• easy to compromise due to a large number of vulnerabilities (past and future...)
• slow to render
• requires additional sysadmin maintenance

Currently proposed solution is to use Jekyll on Github.io to resolve some of the cons.

Downsides of proposed solution

• github.io is (perhaps?) blocked by the great firewall
  • workaround: easy to auto-generate the pages and push them to a static serving server
• editing requires cloning the large repository (currently >300MB) due to image assets
  • workaround: clean out heavy assets
  • workaround: edit online
  • workaround: store images separately from git repository (only keep markdown pages)
• editing requires knowledge of Markdown and Jekyll
  • workaround: teach workshop, write tutorials

Alternatives

• use a Wordpress host that actively maintains the blog software
• we could also capture a static copy of the wordpress site and block off direct access to the site with HTTP Auth

Usage

• get a github account if you don't already have one
• send account name to staff@xinchejian.com and request to get added to XinCheJian Git repositories
• once you gain access, you're ready to edit the page

Example on Mac

Assuming you have Homebrew (http://brew.sh):

 brew install git
 brew install git-flow

At the terminal

 git clone git@github.com:xinchejian/xinchejian.github.io.git