Introduction to Creating a Website with GitHub and Markdown

Writing code is only one aspect of software development. Communicating your work is crucial for others to find, understand, execute and contribute to your projects. This workshop will focus on this aspect of communication, using Markdown to create simple but attractive outputs that can standalone as a website or become part of your GitHub repository. 

Markdown is a markup language for formatting text. Its easy-to-use syntax gives users the power to style and format text as they write. Markdown offers elements that make it particularly well-suited to writing web content or technical documentation, such as task lists, tables, code highlighting and more. Markdown is also the language of choice for GitHub, Jupyter Notebooks and R Notebooks – each with its own flavour that extends the basic functionality of Markdown.

In this workshop, we will explore Markdown’s basic syntax and usage and see some advanced features that are specific to the GitHub flavour of Markdown. Participants may wish to use the session to start a personal website or project landing page, or simply work with the sample website that will be provided. By the end of the workshop, each participant will have their own live website, which they can confidently continue to develop independently. 

Syllabus:

• Why we communicate code and software
• Basic Markdown syntax, images, and links 
• Markdown tables and code blocks
• GitHub-flavoured Markdown (task lists, admonitions, math formatting, diagrams)
• Create a simple website with Markdown 

This course is open to Research Degree Students, Postdocs & Research Fellows. Limited spaces available for wider Imperial community.

Learning Outcomes:

On completion of this workshop you will be able to:

• Create communication outputs for code or software projects that you develop
• Format text, create tables, and insert images and code blocks using Markdown
• Utilise advanced Markdown syntax offered by GitHub’s flavour of Markdown
• Create a README, a Jupyter presentation or an R Markdown report
  

Prerequisites

You must have a GitHub account that you can access during the session. You may wish to bring rough notes or ideas for a personal or project website you wish to create.  

How to book

• Early Career Researchers (Research Degree Students, Postdocs, Research Fellows) should book via Inkpath using your Imperial Single-Sign-On.
• All other members of the Imperial community, should book here.

Please ensure you have read and understood ECRI’s cancellation policy before booking.