First post on this website!

Hello there!

This is the first post ever created on bryan351018.github.io. But you might ask: what is this website?

Backbones

The website that you’re seeing right now is built on top of two monstrous third-party projects: Jekyll and Minimal Mistakes.

Jekyll

Websites are ultimately displayed from HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. While it is possible to make an entire website from these (such as my JavaScript Projects, though they are more appropriately called “web apps”), it can get incredibly tedious and repetitive.

This is where Jekyll comes in. Instead of having to worry about the repetitive aspects like menubars and formatting, Jekyll allows you to configure once, and not have to worry about it for a long time. This allows you to focus mainly on the high-level contents of the websites, instead of the technical details.

Jekyll combines Markdown, HTML, and YAML into an entire website. Markdown is used for the post, article, and menubar contents, while YAML is used for configuration files for the website.

This post was written in Markdown, for example. Feel free to peek at the source document.

Minimal Mistakes

Minimal Mistakes is a Jekyll plugin that provides many convenient features, including automatic styling, page and article templates, automatic search and comments integration, optional layouts, custom themes, and a lot more.

Why not use a commercial content management system?

While services like Wix.com, Shopify, Squarespace, and WordPress do exist, and they have a more intuitive interface for people not experienced with programming… They are not a great fit once the website grows larger and larger, since the visual manipulation of the webpage elements can be time-consuming and pretty inefficient.

Plus, Jekyll and Minimal Mistakes are open-source projects with hundreds to thousands of contributors, making and discussing changes almost every month. This means they tend to be more actively maintained and less buggy compared to commercial alternatives.

Features

Markdown

Markdown is a simple and intuitive markup language, with features like

• Bulleted lists
  • Multi-level lists

1. Numbered lists

   Block quotes

And even code:

using namespace std;

int main() {
    try {
        std::vector<int> vec{3, 4, 3, 1};
        int i{vec.at(4)}; // Throws an exception, std::out_of_range (indexing for vec is from 0-3 not 1-4)
    } catch (const std::out_of_range& e) {
        // An exception handler, catches std::out_of_range, which is thrown by vec.at(4)
        std::println(stderr, "Accessing a non-existent element: {}", e.what());
    } catch (const std::exception& e) {
        // To catch any other standard library exceptions (they derive from std::exception)
        std::println(stderr, "Exception thrown: {}", e.what());
    } catch (...) {
        // Catch any unrecognised exceptions (i.e. those which don't derive from std::exception)
        std::println(stderr, "Some fatal error");
    }

    return 0;
}

n = int(input('Type a number, and its factorial will be printed: '))

if n < 0:
    raise ValueError('You must enter a non-negative integer')

factorial = 1
for i in range(2, n + 1):
    factorial *= i

print(factorial)

function print_hello()
{
    console.log("Hello World!")
    return true;
}

Mathematics and chemistry rendering

By enabling a configuration for this post, it can display inline math equations such as \( f(z) = z^3 - 1, \ z \in \mathbb{C} \), and even inline chemical entities like \( \ce{H2O} \). This is done thanks to the \( \KaTeX \) library.

Centered math equations and chemical entities can also be displayed, and they look even better: \[ \sigma = \sqrt{ \frac{1}{N} \sum_{i=1}^N (x_i -\mu)^2} \]

\[ C_p[\ce{H2O(l)}] = \pu{75.3 J // mol K} \]

Try copying any of the equations above, and pasting it somewhere else! It will paste as \( \LaTeX \) code (for browsers that support it).

Go forth!

There’s a comment section at the end of the page that you can play around with, but otherwise, thanks for showing interest in my website! See you soon.