Making a Math Website

As an Emory math graduate student,

with focus on HMTL, Google Sites, or GitHub

Disclaimer: These are some popular options I have seen, and I can show some basic principles I’ve learned, but there are infinitely more ways to do this that I don’t know about. I hope these basic outlines will be helpful.

Get Inspiration

• Perhaps the most effective website-making strategy I have seen is to find one you like, and essentially copy it
• This is an extremely well-respected strategy in the mathematics community, as far as I can tell
• Looking at examples is a great way to figure out what is important to you. What did you like? What didn’t you like?

Examples: HTML, hosted by Emory

• David Borthwick: https://www.math.emory.edu/~davidb/
• Julianne Chung: https://www.math.emory.edu/~jmchung/
• Alessandro Veneziani: https://www.math.emory.edu/~ale/
• Yuanzhe Xi: https://www.math.emory.edu/~yxi26/
• Nat Milnes: https://www.math.emory.edu/~nmilnes/
• Emma Hart: https://www.math.emory.edu/~ehart5/

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Examples: Google Sites

• Neha Gupta: https://sites.google.com/site/nehagupta15/
• Matthias Chung: https://sites.google.com/view/matthias-chung/
• Lucas Onisk: https://sites.google.com/view/lucas-onisk/
• Matthew Allen: https://sites.google.com/view/matthew-allen/
• Griffin Johnston: https://sites.google.com/view/griffins-webpage/

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Examples: GitHub

• Elle Buser: https://ellebuser.github.io/
• Mitchell Scott: https://mtscott.github.io/
• Michael Zheng: https://mx-xz.github.io/

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Choosing which option to use

Ease of Use

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Customizability

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EHCU Ratings

HMTL

Google Sites

GitHub

In an hour with no experience

With a lot of time/experience

HMTL

Google Sites

GitHub

Other Factors and Considerations:

• Permanence of the URL
• Cost of a nice URL
• Pride and/or showing off

• Needing an account
• Search Engine Optimization???

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HTML:

1. Create HTML file(s) and edit locally
• Working from a template makes this much easier! If you choose a structure that you like already, then edit text/images, it is a more straightforward process
• You can test out your site locally by opening the HTML file in Chrome/other
2. Email Edgar Leon and ask for a home directory (starting September 30)
3. Transfer your files to home/NETID/sunhome/share/public_html
4. Check http://math.emory.edu/~NETID to make sure things look ok
5. Contact Terry about including your URL on the math site
6. Update with vim or by re-transferring local files

MUCH more detailed instructions at the end of this presentation

Google Sites:

https://sites.google.com/view/emory-website-session-sample?usp=sharing

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1. Create a new Google Site (kind of like PowerPoint UI)
2. Choose domain options and publish
3. Contact Terry about including your URL on the math site
4. To update your website, edit with the same UI and publish on Google Sites (no other step necessary!)

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GitHub:

1. Create a new GitHub repository, and name it USERNAME.github.io
2. Create HTML or Markdown or Other files
• Markdown is more lightweight than HTML, can be more intuitive and less intensive to learn
• Again, working from a template can make it even easier
3. Check USERNAME.github.io to make sure things look ok
4. Contact Terry about including your URL on the math site
5. To update, make and commit changes to the repository (no other step necessary!)

A Detailed Guide to Stealing Dr. David Borthwick’s Website*

1. In Chrome, navigate to https://www.math.emory.edu/~davidb/
2. Right click and select “View Page Source”
3. Copy all the lines of HMTL, (Windows: ctrl+a, ctrl+c, Mac: cmd+a, cmd+c)

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*Be sure to ask/credit him before publishing.

A Detailed Guide to Stealing Dr. David Borthwick’s Website*

4. Create a new folder and a new .html file in that folder (ex: folder “Website Tutorial”, file “borthwick_ex.html”)
5. Open the .html file in some text editor (ex: Notepad, VScode)
6. In that text editor, paste the HTML that you copied and save (Windows: ctrl+v, ctrl+s, Mac: cmd+v, cmd+s)

A Detailed Guide to Stealing Dr. David Borthwick’s Website*

7. See what your website looks like by opening your .hmtl file in Chrome
8. In your .html file, make some changes (ex: “David Borthwick homepage” to “Your Name”). Save.
9. Back in chrome, reload the page to see your change

A Detailed Guide to Stealing Dr. David Borthwick’s Website*

10. Make some other changes, save, and reload in Chrome to check your progress.
11. You can replace the picture simply by including the picture file in your folder, and changing “davidb.jpg” to the name of your picture.
12. Play around!

13. Once things are as you like, ssh to server (need home directory)

ssh NETID@lab0z.mathcs.emory.edu

• See what folder you are in

pwd

15. List everything in folder

ls

16. Change directory to sunhome/share

cd sunhome/share

Your website should be placed here in a folder called public_html

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A Detailed Guide to Stealing Dr. David Borthwick’s Website*

17. Open a new terminal session locally
18. Use pwd, cd, and ls commands to navigate until you see the folder containing your website.
19. Be sure that you have named your folder public_html and that your homepage is named index.html
20. Copy this folder to the correct folder in your home directory on the server using the scp command:

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A Detailed Guide to Stealing Dr. David Borthwick’s Website*

scp –r public_html NETID@lab0z.mathcs.emory.edu:/home/NETID/sunhome/share/

A Detailed Guide to Stealing Dr. David Borthwick’s Website*

• Check http://math.emory.edu/~NETID to see if things are working
• To update your website, you can use rm to delete the current folder, and follow the same steps as before to reupload an updated website. Make sure you keep local copies safe!

rm –r public_html

• Debug with me, Michael, Varun, Sergio, or Edgar

☺

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