Why bother in the first place?

Because we, the younglings lost in the academia, need people to know that we want to do something. Or you are like me, who wants to fulfill his own narcissistic needs, just want to have a site for no reason.

Seriously though, for me a personal site should do the following stuff:

1. Of course, free
2. Please, be easy to learn
3. Hosts my introduction and CV
4. Basic blogging
5. Should host my code/work/data/slides, which needs constant updates
6. Should have some kind of offline and easy to carry copy

So what are my options?

School sites?

Usually very limited on storage and requires way too much effort (besides the server setup, have you ever dealt with the data security team from your university?), and if you graduate/move to some other school, you would face a major issue to migrate everything.

Google site?

Super easy to use. If you are looking for something quick and easy, this is your way to go.

However, I would say I don’t like google’s WYSIWYG editor. The typesetting was fine, but it feels very cumbersome to actually do all the editing online, and I have never been a fan of google docs. The worst part is actually the footer bar, where states that the site is created with new google site tools, and it is just plain unbearable.

GitHub Pages

I guess if you find this article you know what choice I made. Compared to google site, github pages requires more effort to learn and set up, but still easier to learn than the university provided servers. Using markdown is a plus for writing blog post, especially for people who like to use a lot of hyperlink. I am still testing it out, I hope I would have some nice results at the end of this.

Beware, this is indeed a test submission to this blog.