Minimalist self-updating Github profile README
Vidya
Posted on September 29, 2020
Github's new profile readme is all the rage right now. However I wanted something simple, clean, minimalist and entirely within the Github ecosystem.
Creating a self-updating profile readme helped me -
- Start a technical blog and TIL blog within Github itself
- Retrieve relevant information from within Github ecosystem (no separate blog needed)
This self-updating readme has been inspired from the work at
Building a self-updating profile README for GitHub by Simon Willison.
Following are my steps towards creating the self-updating profile readme.
1. Create a technical blog within Github
I used the Github Learning Lab for GitHub Pages to learn how to create a blog with Github. The lab got me up to speed very quickly.
I chose the simple look of minima
theme with the solarized-dark
skin. How it looks
2. Create a TIL repo within Github
This blog was to retain snippets of 'Today-I-learned'. I used the same approach as for creating the technical blog. Used the basic Minimal
theme for its clean design. How it looks
3. Self-Updating the readme for the TIL repo using Github actions.
This is to update the repo whenever a new TIL is added. The count of the total number of TILs is also updated.
The following files from the repo are needed to self-update the readme.
-
requirements.txt
(No change required) -
update_readme.py
(No change required) -
README.md
(Personalize this) -
build_database.py
(Personalize the url shown below) ```python
url = "https://github.com/vidyabhandary/til/blob/master/{}".format(path)
- Create a manual workflow using Github actions
This will create a `./github/workflows` directory with a `main.yml` file.
Can rename this to `build.yml` or retain the existing name.
Update with code from [build.yml](https://github.com/vidyabhandary/TIL/blob/master/.github/workflows/build.yml).
## And finally ...
### 4. Create a repo with the same name as your Github ID
This is the special repository. Its README.md will appear on your public profile!
### 5. Self-updating read-me for the Github profile.
The following files from the [repo](https://github.com/vidyabhandary/vidyabhandary) are required to
create the self-updating read-me for Github.
- `requirements.txt` *(No change required)*
- `README.md` *(Personalize this)*
- `build_readme.py` *(Personalize the urls shown below)*
```python
til_readme = "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vidyabhandary/TIL/master/README.md"
entries = feedparser.parse("https://vidyabhandary.github.io/blog/feed.xml")["entries"]
- Create a manual workflow using Github actions
This will create a
./github/workflows
directory with amain.yml
file. Update with code from main.yml.
And that's it !!!!
You now have a self-updating profile readme in Github that updates once a day with your blog posts and TILs.
The final look - https://github.com/vidyabhandary
Posted on September 29, 2020
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