By the end of this tutorial, you will open a public blog with your own site title and an edited article. Use the supplied example throughout; you can choose colors and add photographs after publishing.
Start with the GitHub template
Sign in to a free GitHub account and use your browser,
preferably on a computer. No software installation is needed.
The Chulapa 101 example
shows the blog you will personalize. The template follows the theme’s main
branch through remote_theme: dieghernan/chulapa, without pinning a release,
with Butterfly for light mode and Butterfly Dim for dark mode. Visitors can
choose Light, Dark or Auto from the navigation.
Your copy will be public. Do not add passwords, private photographs or other information you do not want to share.
1. Create your site
Open the template.
In Repository name, enter my-blog, choose Public and create the repository.
A repository is the folder containing your site’s files on GitHub.
Check: the repository belongs to your account and shows a list of files.
2. Enable publishing
In your new repository, open Settings > Pages. Under Build and deployment, select GitHub Actions as the source. The template already includes the files needed to publish; you do not need to add a workflow.
Check: Pages shows GitHub Actions as its publishing source.
3. Name your blog
Return to Code, open _config.yml and click the pencil button. This is the
file for your site settings. Find these existing entries and replace their values.
For a GitHub account called ana and a repository called my-blog:
title: "My first blog"
repository: ana/my-blog
url: "https://ana.github.io"
description: "Stories from my everyday life"
Use your own account and repository names. Replace the existing entries; do not
paste another copy or replace the whole file. Keep the other settings and spaces,
including baseurl: the template sets the site’s path for you.
In the existing author: section, replace name: Your name with your name.
Keep name indented under author: and preserve the other author settings.
Click Commit changes. This saves a version of the file. Save to your
repository’s default branch (main or master in the template); publishing
starts automatically. You can edit the article while it runs.
Next, open index.html in Code and click the pencil. Change only its existing
title line, between the opening --- lines, to:
title: "My first blog"
Keep the filename index.html and all other content. Save with Commit changes
on the same branch. This changes the heading visitors see on your home page.
Check: both saved files contain “My first blog” as their title.
4. Write your first post
In Code, open _posts/, choose a sample article and click the pencil button.
Keep its filename and the settings between the two --- lines. Change only its
title entry to:
title: "Hello, this is my website"
Replace the article text below the second --- line with:
Today I am publishing my first story.
Click Commit changes and save to the same default branch.
Check: the saved article contains your title and sentence.
5. Open your published website
Open Actions and find the publishing run for your latest saved change. Wait for it to finish successfully. Publishing may take a few minutes.
If no publishing run appears, select Deploy Chulapa Jekyll site to Pages in the Actions sidebar, click Run workflow, choose the default branch you edited and click the green Run workflow button. If GitHub first asks you to enable workflows, enable them, then run this workflow.
Open the website address shown in Settings > Pages. Check the site title,
then open your edited article. If you are viewing files on github.com, return
to Pages and open the website address instead.
You have published your first site: its title is “My first blog” and the article shows “Hello, this is my website” with your sentence below it.
If the run fails or your changes do not appear, follow the publishing checks, then return here to check the result.
What to do next
Before sharing the site, replace the remaining sample articles and the example
biography and contact details in _pages/about.md. Review the author: settings
in _config.yml too. Keep the home page filename index.html.
For another guided exercise, follow Publish an illustrated page using the starter photograph and a fixed menu entry.
Choose a next task when you need it: