A Non-Coder’s Guide to Editing Your Website

This guide will walk you through the most common edits you’ll want to make to your academic website. All changes can be made directly from the GitHub interface, without writing any code.

The general process for editing any file is:

Navigate to the file in your GitHub repository.
Click the pencil icon (✏️) in the top-right corner to edit the file.
Make your changes.
Scroll to the bottom of the page, type a brief commit message (e.g., “Update publications list”), and click “Commit changes”.
Wait a minute or two for GitHub to automatically update your live website.

How to Change Your Profile Picture

Upload your new picture:
- Go to the assets/images/ directory in your repository.
- Click Add file > Upload files.
- Drag and drop your new profile picture here. Let’s say you name it profile-pic.jpg.

Update the configuration file:

Open the _config.yml file.
Find the author: section.

Update the avatar: line to point to your new image:

author:
  name             : "Your Name"
  avatar           : "/assets/images/profile-pic.jpg" # Change this line
  # ... other settings

How to Update Your CV PDF File

Upload your new CV:
- Go to the files/ directory. If it doesn’t exist, you can create it.
- Click Add file > Upload files.
- Upload your new CV PDF, for example, my_cv.pdf.
Update the link on your CV page:
- Open the _pages/cv.md file.
- You can add a link to the top of the page like this:
```
---
layout: archive
title: "CV"
permalink: /cv/
author_profile: true
---

[Download my CV as a PDF](/files/my_cv.pdf)

Education
======
* B.S. in ...
```
- Replace my_cv.pdf with the exact name of the file you uploaded.

How to Edit Page Content (About, CV, Publications)

Your main pages are located in the _pages/ directory. These are simple text files using Markdown syntax.

To Edit Your “About” Page: Open _pages/about.md. You can edit the text directly under each heading (======).
To Edit Your “CV” Page: Open _pages/cv.md. You can add or remove items from the lists under “Education”, “Work experience”, etc. Use a * for bullet points.

To Edit Your “Publications” Page: Open _pages/publications.md. Each publication is a bullet point. To add a new one, just copy the format of an existing one and paste it at the top of the list.

Example of a publication entry:

* Azze, Abel; D’Auria, Bernardo; García-Portugués, Eduardo. "Optimal stopping of Gauss–Markov bridges", 2025, Advances in Applied Probability, to appear. [Journal link](https://doi.org/...) [ArXiv link](https://arxiv.org/...)

All of this information is in one central file.

Open the _config.yml file.
Scroll down to the author: section.

Edit the following fields:

author:
  name             : "Your Full Name"
  avatar           : "/assets/images/your-photo.jpg"
  bio              : "Your title and affiliation (e.g., Assistant Professor at CUNEF Universidad)"
  location         : "City, Country"
  email            : "your.email@example.com"
  # ...

To edit social media links, find the author.links: section within the same file. You can update the URL for each entry or add/remove services.

  links:
    - label: "Email"
      icon: "fas fa-fw fa-envelope-square"
      url: "mailto:your.email@example.com"
    - label: "Website"
      icon: "fas fa-fw fa-link"
      url: "https://your-website.com"
    - label: "Twitter"
      icon: "fab fa-fw fa-twitter-square"
      url: "https://twitter.com/your_handle"
    # - label: "GitHub"
    #   icon: "fab fa-fw fa-github"
    #   url: "https://github.com/your_username"

To remove a link, you can either delete the lines or “comment them out” by adding a # at the beginning of each line (as shown for GitHub above).
To add a link, copy an existing block and change the label, icon, and url.

How to Add a New Page (e.g., “Teaching”) and Link it in the Top Bar

This is a two-step process: you first create the page, then you add the link.

Step 1: Create the New Page

Go to the _pages/ directory.
Click Add file > Create new file.
Name the file teaching.md (or projects.md, etc.).

Copy and paste the following template into the file. This is the “front matter” that Jekyll needs.

---
layout: archive
title: "Teaching"
permalink: /teaching/
author_profile: true
---

Here you can write about your teaching experience.

## Course Title 1
*   Details about the course...

## Course Title 2
*   More details...

Change the title: and permalink: to match your new page. The permalink will be the URL (e.g., your-site.com/teaching/).
Add your content below the --- lines.

Step 2: Add the Link to the Top Navigation Bar

Open the _data/navigation.yml file.

To add a link to your new “Teaching” page, add the following lines to the list. The order in the file determines the order on the website.

# main navigation
main:
  - title: "Home"
    url: /
  - title: "Publications"
    url: /publications/
  - title: "Teaching"      # <-- New line
    url: /teaching/     # <-- New line
  - title: "CV"
    url: /cv/

The title: is the text that appears on the button.
The url: must match the permalink: you set in the page’s file.

How to Edit or Reorder Existing Links in the Top Bar

Open the _data/navigation.yml file.
To rename a link: Simply change the title: value. For example, to change “Home” to “About”: ```yaml
- title: “About” # Was “Home” url: / ```
To reorder links: Cut and paste the blocks of title and url to change their order in the list.

Abel G. Azze