cattaneo

Personal site for Prof. Matias Cattaneo. Updated via HTML, compiled via Jekyll, and served via GitHub Pages.

Structure

• Top-level files like index.html, publications.html, research.html correspond to /, /publications/, and /research/ respectively.
• Each HTML file has YAML front-matter at the top for Jekyll to process.
• Reusable fragments live in _includes/, e.g. header, footer, etc.
• Page layouts are in _layouts/; the site only uses a single layout.
• Menus are built and controled by the _data/navigation.yml file.
• CSS, JS, and images are grouped under assets/.
• The site is built with Jekyll with a push to the main branch and then automatically published via GitHub Pages (live when the green checkmark appears).
• A Docker-based workflow is provided as a local development option.

Editing the Site

Pages are plain HTML. Edit the HTML as you normally would. The YAML front-matter block at the top of each page are directives to Jekyll and can otherwise be ignored.

Jekyll will process Liquid syntax for asset/link paths. When adding new images for example, prefer {{ 'assets/images/award.jpg' | relative_url }} so Jekyll injects the correct baseurl for GitHub Pages.

Base URL and GitHub Pages

The site is served from https://pubino.github.io/cattaneo. The production _config.yml includes:

baseurl: "/cattaneo"

Update the base accordingly.

Note that local development uses _config.local.yml to override baseurl and url so the site builds and serves from http://localhost:4000 without any appended values in the path.

Local development (recommended: Docker Compose)

A Docker Compose workflow is available for reproducible local development:

1. Ensure Docker and Docker Compose are installed.

2. Start the development server:

docker-compose up

3. Visit http://localhost:4000 to preview the site with live reload enabled.

The docker-compose.yml handles:

• ARM64 platform compatibility
• Bundle installation and caching
• Live reload for development
• Volume mounting for real-time file changes

Alternative: Direct Docker commands

If you prefer using Docker directly:

1. Build the image:

docker build -t cattaneo-site .

2. Run with live reload:

docker run --platform linux/arm64 -p 4000:4000 -v "$(pwd)":/srv/jekyll jekyll/jekyll:latest jekyll serve --host 0.0.0.0 --watch --livereload --config "_config.yml,_config.local.yml"

Local Ruby installation

If you prefer Ruby locally, install Ruby and Bundler, then run:

bundle install
bundle exec jekyll serve --config _config.yml,_config.local.yml

Building for production locally

If you want to generate a production build (the same layout GitHub Pages will serve):

bundle exec jekyll build --config _config.yml
# built files will be in _site/

You can then preview _site/ with a static server, e.g. python3 -m http.server 4001 inside _site/.

Deploying

• This repo is configured to publish from main via GitHub Pages. Pushing to main triggers GitHub Pages to rebuild the site.
• After a push, wait a minute and check https://pubino.github.io/cattaneo.

Troubleshooting

• 404s for assets on GitHub Pages: first check that baseurl is set in _config.yml and that templates use relative_url. Inspect the page source and confirm asset URLs begin with /cattaneo/assets/....
• Absolute 0.0.0.0 in console warnings during local dev: use _config.local.yml (already in repo) so generated absolute links point to http://localhost:4000, avoiding 0.0.0.0 addresses the browser blocks.
• If a page needs to keep its old /page.html URL, add redirect_from to the page front-matter (the jekyll-redirect-from plugin is enabled).

Helpful git workflow

• Create a branch for feature work:

git checkout -b fix/some-change
# edit files
git add .
git commit -m "Describe change"
git push -u origin fix/some-change

• Open a PR and merge when ready. GitHub Pages will publish from main.

Contact / next steps

If you want, I can:

• Add a simple GitHub Action that builds the site and shows the generated files as an artifact before pushing to main.
• Make any remaining templates use {{ '...path...' | relative_url }} where I find hard-coded leading slashes.

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Last updated: 2025-10-09