The news today is that I have moved my site to github pages.

Here are the reasons.

'Free' in 'free coffee'

As you know, github pages is a free service for static sites, of which a sample is blog. All you need to do are register an account on github (For me, it is zhaiyusci) and then create a repo named zhaiyusci.github.io (Of course, you should use your own user name here) and put your html files in it. Then you get the website named <yourusername>.github.io. If you think 'Why don't I have my own domain' then buy a domain name and follow github's manual. Of course you should pay for the domain name but you save a big amount of money for the server.

Safe

For the contents can be published, the safest way to store is to publish them (online). Make sure there are two copy of your data. If you use github pages, then all your blog articles have a copy on github and another copy on your laptop/desktop (if you use git the right way).

I use pelican as the static sites generator. Hence, the source codes of the sites are even more important than the generated site. In the past I save the source codes in Nutstore. I recommend it to the readers in China to use Nutstore because it is really reliable for documents. But for codes, git is better (Even staff of Nutstore recommended using git for codes). Now I can simply save my source codes in master branch and teh site to gh-pages branch.

Less ad

Those who used Wordpress know what I mean here ;-)

So you may ask how can I start?

The first step is to learn how to use git and github. I recommand learn it via this video. 'Fantastic' lesson, clear idea and voice so that even I can understand.

Then pelican, which is optional. Of cource you can choose your favourite site generator --- But this is recommanded by me. You can see that their docs are generated by 'read the docs'. I bet they just know which tool is best for a very kind of site, that is why they made good tools. Chapter 'Tips' has included the step-by-step tutorial to build a site on github (not including what I wrote above how to save your source on github, that's why I wrote you should leanr git first).