geoblacklight.github.io

About

This site provides the public-facing website for the GeoBlacklight community.

Written in: Markdown language

Markdown is a lightweight and easy-to-use language for text documents.

Generated with: MkDocs framework

MkDocs is a static site generator platform that allows users to create and maintain documentation websites. It takes Markdown files and uses the Python-Markdown library to convert the documents to HTML.

Styled with: Material for MkDocs theme

Material is the most actively developed theme available for MkDocs (as of 2023) and features flexible navigation and many plugins to extend what we can do with Markdown. It is called "Material" because it is based on Google's Material Design guidelines.

Published with: GitHub Pages

GitHub Pages is a free static site hosting service offered by GitHub.

Repository organization

Main branch

This is the working branch containing the content for the site using Markdown.

• readme.md: the file you are reading right now
• mkdocs.yml: the configuration file that identifies the theme, the extensions, and the navigation
• docs folder

  • various markdown (*.md) documents: The content for the site. These are organized for the public navigation menu in the nav section of mkdocs.yml.

  • /blog

    • .authors.yml: a list of blog authors and their GitHub usernames
    • index.md: a mostly blank page used by the blog plugin
    • /posts/: collection of blog posts in markdown

  • /images : image files for general pages

  • /pdfs: PDF files

  • /showcase

    • image files (generally screenshots of GeoBlacklight instances) just for the showcase page
    • index.md: all the GeoBlacklight instances listed on the showpage

  • /stylesheets

    • extra.css : a CSS file that can define colors, fonts, and other customizations for the site

  • /docs: technical documentation pages. Note that this has the same name as the root folder for all the pages! We use this name so that the documentation pages will appear in a subdirectory in the public site, i.e. geoblacklight.org/docs/metadata

gh-pages branch

This is the published branch containing the HTML code for the site. (We do not edit this branch directly).

• index.html: an HTML file containing the information in the index.md file in your Main branch
• The rest of your markdown content pages with be in separate directories. The directory name is the name of the markdown file and it contains an HTML file called index.html
• /images and /stylesheets : same as the Main branch
• /assets : contains subdirectories for /images, /javascripts, and /stylesheets. These subdirectories contain the favicon and compiled code.
• .nojekyll : The existence of this file tells GitHub that the site is not using Jekyll. Related GitHub blog post.

Updating the GeoBlacklight website

Everyone is welcome to contribute to the GeoBlacklight website and our documentation pages. See our Contribution Guide for detailed information about how to contribute.