How to check the website locally

The UC Love Data Week website is a repository on GitHub, published using GitHub Pages. GitHub Pages are powered by Jekyll, a static site generator. Changes to the website should be checked locally before being pushed live. This requires installing Jekyll locally, which in turn requires Ruby v 2.5.0 or higher, RubyGems, and GCC & Make.

Individual OS instructions to install Jekyll and its requirements should be linked from https://jekyllrb.com/docs/installation/

We recommend git-bash (installation instructions) if you are on Windows and do not have a Windows Subsystem for Linux distribution installed (or do not understand the last half of this sentence). If you're using git-bash, when during the Ruby installation process, choose to install the MSYS2 toolchain. On the last step of the installation screen, make sure that “Run ‘ridk install’” is checked. This will bring a terminal window with 3 options, press “Enter” (for the default installation). After this step completes, you’ll be prompted again, and press “Enter” again (for the default option). Once the installation is complete, restart your system.

When you're finished installing Jekyll and Bundler using gem install jekyll bundler, check that Jekyll has been installed correctly executing jekyll -v.

There is no gemfile, but it requires jekyll-sitemap. Run on the command line gem install jekyll-sitemap to install.

To build the website locally, open a new command prompt window (terminal, git-bash, etc), navigate to the local uc-love-data-week repository, then execute jekyll serve.

Update July 2024

There is an issue in the a recent version of Ruby and jekyll regarding webricks.

In theory (not working, but noting in case it works for others) Run bundle init to create a Gemfile (instructional reference). Then run bundle add webrick, then bundle add jekyll. After these run successfully, run bundle exec jekyll new --force --skip-bundle . then bundle install. You should now we able to serve the website locally with bundle exec jekyll serve.

What did work was uninstalling and reinstalling jekyll. Original directions work ok with ruby 3.2.4 and jekyll 4.3.3 versions.