TLDR

I’ve launched a new website that I manage at a much lower level to allow me to explore things like interactive graphics and demonstrations. It’s arirubin.space, and while currently sparse, you should check it out!

What I was Looking For

To understand the choices I made in setting up arirubin.space, it’s best to start with what I wanted, and didn’t want, out of the new website.

Wants

Enough control to do interactive demonstrations – I’ve enjoyed the images and gifs that Gereshes hosts, but I’ve found myself thinking “this would be a lot more clear if I were able to interact and adjust this simulation in real-time” Low Cost – I’m a poor grad student 🙁

Unwanted

Dealing with site maintenance – I’m a grad student and if I have to do a lot of maintenance to keep the site online, I would just end up focusing on my research instead of creating new content.

In short, I wanted a reliable backend and complete control over my front end for cheap. AKA, something for nothing, or close to nothing. In comes my savior, Github Pages.

GitHub Pages

Github Pages is a static site hosting service. What that means is that it will serve simple files (Html, CSS, javascript, etc…), but you won’t have any access to things in the backend like databases or email.

This was exactly what I needed, GitHub handles the hosting and I can focus on the front end. I even can use a custom domain name, although I do have to buy one.

There are some downsides to GitHub Pages though

You need to know HTML, CSS, and JavaScript – This is fine as to do interactives I would need to learn all 3 anyway and I already have some experience with HTML and CSS. You need to be able to deal with Git – Another learning curve, but if you do any sort of software development you will need to know, or at least learn a bit of, git anyway. Your code is public – I have a free account which means I can’t use a private repo to host my website so anyone can see all the source code. But then again I try to post my code from Gereshes on Github anyway so that’s not a big deal for me.

In the end, I get a custom domain website on which I can play around and experiment with for only $20 a year (The cost of the .space domain registration). If you haven’t yet, you should check it out and I have some cool demonstrations already in the works, so you should sign up for the gereshes newsletter here to get notified when they come out!