Setting Up Your Site and Essay

This is Part 1 of the student guide to publishing on the Campus History site. Your course syllabus explains the assignment, grading, due dates, and reflection requirements. The guide only covers the site workflow, in three parts:

1. Setting up your site and essay (this page): make your own copy of the site, start your essay folder, and add your header image.
2. Working on your essay: finish the metadata, write, add images and pull quotes, and check your work.
3. Submitting your essay: go through the checklist and open a pull request.

Before You Start

• Create or sign in to a GitHub account.
• Choose a topic according to your course assignment.
• Check with your instructor before duplicating a topic already claimed by another student.
• Open the Campus History repository.

Fork the Repository

In GitHub, a “fork” (like a fork in the road) is your own copy of the Campus History repository. You can edit your own copy without changing the “official” site until you are ready.

1. Go to the Campus History repository.

2. Click Fork in the upper-right corner.

   

3. Keep the default settings and click Create fork.
4. After GitHub creates the fork, make sure the URL includes your GitHub username.

Bookmark two pages:

• Your repository: https://github.com/YOUR-USERNAME/campus-history
• Your preview site, once GitHub Pages is enabled: https://YOUR-USERNAME.github.io/campus-history

Preview Your Work

Your fork can generate its own preview version of the website. Use that preview to check page content, links, images, and formatting before submitting. Fork previews can behave a little differently from the public Campus History site because they live under your GitHub username, so do not change _config.yml or site-wide settings unless your instructor specifically tells you to.

1. In your fork, click Settings.
2. Click Pages in the left sidebar.
3. Under Build and deployment, choose Deploy from a branch.
4. Select the master branch and the / (root) folder.
5. Click Save.
6. Wait a minute or two, then return to Settings > Pages and open the published site link.

GitHub Pages takes about a minute to rebuild your site and show your latest changes.

Start From a Starter Essay

All essays live in the essays folder. Each essay has its own folder and an index.md file inside that folder. The easiest way to begin is to copy one of the starter essay folders and rename it for your topic.

Use one of these:

• starter-essay-simple — best for most essays. It already contains everything a finished essay needs: a lead paragraph, subheadings, captioned images, a carousel, and a bibliography. Replace the placeholder text and images and you have a complete page.
• starter-essay-advanced — a parts catalog containing one working example of every component the site offers, including pullquotes, image grids, before/after sliders, footnotes, banner images, and full-screen scrollstory sections. Start here only if you want the fuller set, and delete every component you do not use.

Choose a Folder Name

Pick your folder name before you copy anything. It becomes part of your essay’s web address, as in /essays/mesa-vista-hall/.

Folder names must be:

• all lowercase
• hyphenated instead of spaced
• short but recognizable
• new: no folder in essays can already have that name
• exactly the same wherever you refer to them

The folders already in essays show the pattern: duck-pond, maxwell-museum, sara-raynolds-hall. Check that list before you name yours. If your topic already has a folder, add a word that sets yours apart, such as duck-pond-1970s. Even mesa-vista-hall, the example on this page, is taken by the site’s demo essay. Two essays in the same folder would overwrite each other.

Copy the Starter Folder

Do not edit the starter folder itself. Duplicate it, then rename the copy.

You will do this in GitHub’s web editor, which runs in your browser. Use a laptop or desktop computer: the editor depends on right-clicking and does not work well on a phone or tablet (many tablets are fine, but quite hard to use if you’re not used to this sort of thing). On a Mac trackpad, right-click by clicking with two fingers, or by holding Control while you click.

1. Open your fork. Go to https://github.com/YOUR-USERNAME/campus-history. Check that the address shows your username, not amaranth-unm. If it shows amaranth-unm, you are in the main repository, and you cannot save changes there.
2. Open the editor. In your browser’s address bar, change github.com to github.dev so the address reads https://github.dev/YOUR-USERNAME/campus-history, then press Enter. Sign in if GitHub asks. The editor opens with a list of files down the left side.
3. Open the essays folder. Click essays in the file list. It expands into a list of folders, one for each essay, in alphabetical order. Find starter-essay-simple under S.
4. Copy the starter. Right-click starter-essay-simple and choose Copy. Nothing visible happens. That is normal.
5. Paste it into essays. Scroll up and right-click the word essays itself, not any folder inside it, and choose Paste. A new folder called starter-essay-simple copy appears in the list under essays. If it does not, the copy went somewhere else: see the fixes below.
6. Rename the copy. Right-click starter-essay-simple copy, the one with copy in its name, and choose Rename. Delete the whole name, type your folder name, and press Enter.
7. Check the folder list. essays should now contain both starter-essay-simple and your new folder. Click your folder to open it. It should hold index.md and three sample images. index.md is your essay, so keep that filename.
8. Check the list of changes. Click the Source Control icon in the bar on the far left, the one showing a small number. Under Changes you should see four files: index.md and the three sample images, each with your folder name in gray beside it. If any of them shows starter-essay-simple instead, or has a D beside it, stop and use the fixes below.
9. Save to GitHub. Type Start my essay in the Message box above the list of changes, then click Commit & Push.
10. Confirm it worked. Go back to your fork on github.com and open the essays folder. Your folder should be there. After a minute or two, your preview site shows your page at /essays/your-folder-name/.

Nothing you change in the editor reaches your fork or your preview site until you commit. Repeat steps 8 and 9 each time you finish a round of changes.

If Something Goes Wrong

If you have not committed yet, the easiest fix is to start over. In Source Control, hover over the word Changes and click the curved-arrow icon, Discard All Changes, then confirm. Everything goes back to how it was at your last commit, and you can start again from step 4.

• The copy landed inside starter-essay-simple or another essay’s folder. You right-clicked a folder other than essays when you pasted. Discard your changes, copy again, and this time right-click the word essays to paste.
• Paste is grayed out or missing. You right-clicked blank space, or the copy did not take. Right-click starter-essay-simple, choose Copy again, and then right-click essays.
• starter-essay-simple has disappeared. You renamed the starter instead of the copy. Discard your changes and start again from step 4.
• Your folder name still contains a space or the word copy. Right-click it, choose Rename, and fix it.
• You already committed a mistake. Fix it in the editor so the folders look right again, then commit again. Your pull request only shows how things end up, not every step along the way. If you are not sure how to put things back, ask your instructor before you go further.

Make the Page Yours

Your copy is still the starter, with its sample pictures and placeholder text. The first round of work replaces the top of the page: your title, your name, a category, and one image of your topic. Leave the rest of the placeholder text for now.

Find a Header Image

Your header image stretches across the top of your page, and it stands for your essay everywhere else on the site: the directory, the map, and the homepage. Pick one picture of your topic:

• A photo you take yourself. Hold your phone sideways, so the picture is wider than it is tall, and get the whole building or place in the frame.
• A historical photo from the New Mexico Digital Archive. Search for your topic, open the image, and download the largest size offered.

Then get the file ready:

• It must be a .jpg or .png file. Browsers cannot show .heic, the format many iPhones use. If your file ends in .heic, open it in Preview on a Mac and choose File > Export, with JPEG as the format.
• Rename it in lowercase with hyphens, keeping the extension: mesa-vista-hall-today.jpg.
• Write down where it came from. For your own photo, that is Photograph by Your Name, October 2026. For an archive image, it is the collection name and the item’s title or number.

Categories

Use one of these categories, typed exactly as shown. An essay with any other category does not appear in the directory, so if none fits, ask your instructor.

• Academic Building
• Administration
• Arts Venue
• Athletics
• Campus Services
• Classroom Building
• Dining
• Dormitory
• Historic Building
• Landscape
• Museum
• Office
• Public Art
• Student Resource

The current Campus History directory is generated from essay metadata.

Change the Top of index.md

1. Upload your image. In the web editor, drag the file from your computer onto your folder in the file list, or right-click your folder and choose Upload.... The image should appear inside your folder, next to index.md.
2. Open your essay. Click index.md in your folder. The lines between the two --- lines at the top are the metadata. The starter marks the five lines to change now.
3. Change the five lines. Replace only the text after each colon:
   • title: your topic, such as Mesa Vista Hall
   • author: your name
   • category: one from the list of categories, typed exactly
   • header-image: your image’s filename, exactly as it appears in the file list
   • header-caption: where your image came from
4. Commit. Open Source Control. The changes should be your image and index.md. Type a message such as Add my header image and click Commit & Push.

5. Check your preview. Wait a minute or two, then open https://YOUR-USERNAME.github.io/campus-history/essays/your-folder-name/ and reload the page. Your image should fill the top of the page, with your title over it, your category just above the title, and your name below it.

   

That is a working page of your own. Below the header, it still shows the starter’s placeholder text and sample images until you replace them.

The metadata is easy to break. Keep these rules:

• Do not change anything to the left of a colon, and leave one space after each colon.
• Do not type another colon or a # in these lines. Use a comma or a dash instead: Mesa Vista Hall, the 400-Man Dorm.
• Do not delete either --- line.

If your page loads but its header image, title, and category have disappeared, one of these rules is broken. Look over the lines at the top of index.md, fix the one that breaks a rule, and commit again.

If your page has not changed at all after five minutes, open your fork on github.com and look beside your latest commit. A red ✗, instead of a green check mark, means the site failed to build. Undo your last change, commit again, and ask your instructor if it still fails.

Next

When your instructor tells you to start writing, continue to Part 2: Working on Your Essay.