Dr. Barbara

Dr. Barbara

Making Data Matter

Website Building Series

Make Your Own Website

A four-part workshop for data professionals who want a real, maintainable home base on the internet. We start with GitHub Pages, demystify Jekyll, automate deployments, and end with the reflective insights that make the system sustainable.

Start with Part 1 Back to Writing Hub

Format

4-part workshop

Best for

Portfolio + documentation

Core stack

GitHub Pages, Jekyll, Actions

Why this series

Build a site you can actually maintain

This is the practical guide I wish I had when I first tried to build a portfolio site. It balances setup, mental models, and automation so you can ship consistently without fighting your tooling.

Foundation

Understand the pieces

Learn how GitHub Pages and Jekyll turn Markdown into a live site.

Automation

Deploy with confidence

Set up a GitHub Actions pipeline that ships every commit.

Sustainability

Document what matters

Reflect on the process so you can iterate and grow it long-term.

Table of contents

Follow the path, step by step

Start at the beginning or jump to the part that matches your current setup.

  1. Part 1

    Assembly Required: Getting Started with GitHub Pages

    Launch a professional site and learn why GitHub Pages works so well for data work.

    Read Part 1 →

  2. Part 2

    Under the Hood: Understanding Your Site's Engine

    A mental model for Jekyll, structure, and how content becomes pages.

    Read Part 2 →

  3. Part 3

    Automate Your Site with GitHub Actions

    Ship on every commit with a reproducible CI/CD pipeline.

    Read Part 3 →

  4. Part 4

    A Data Scientist's Reflections of Workshop to Web

    What changes when you can see the system you're shipping.

    Read Part 4 →

Ready to start?

Start with the setup guide

If you only read one post, start with Part 1 — it anchors the full mental model and makes the rest easy to follow.

Start the series