Lindsay Millard — Professional Portfolio Website

This is the repository for my professional portfolio website, showcasing my work in hydrology, water resources engineering, and data science.

Features

• Dark, minimal-mistakes-based theme for a clean, professional feel on any device
• SEO optimised via jekyll-seo-tag
• Blog for technical articles, insights, and Python tutorials
• Project showcase of open-source tools and technical work

Project Structure

.
├── _includes/      # Reusable components (custom head, feature rows)
├── _layouts/       # Page templates (falls through to the remote theme
│                     where no local override is defined)
├── _pages/         # Main content pages (About, Expertise, Projects,
│                     Publications, Python, Blog resources)
├── _posts/         # Blog posts and technical write-ups
├── notebooks/      # Companion Jupyter notebooks for the Python series
├── assets/         # Static assets (CSS, JS, images)
└── _config.yml     # Site configuration

Note: _pages/ starts with an underscore, so it is not picked up by Jekyll automatically — it's force-included via include: [_pages] in _config.yml. Keep that in mind if you ever rename or restructure it.

Technical Stack

• Static Site Generator: Jekyll
• Theme: Minimal Mistakes (dark skin), loaded via remote_theme
• Hosting: GitHub Pages
• CI/CD: GitHub Actions (.github/workflows/jekyll.yml)

Local Development

1. Install prerequisites

   • Ruby 2.7+
   • Bundler: gem install bundler

2. Clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/lmillard79/lmillard79.github.io.git
   cd lmillard79.github.io

3. Install dependencies

   bundle install

4. Run the site locally

   bundle exec jekyll serve

   The site will be available at http://localhost:4000.

Deployment

The site deploys automatically to GitHub Pages via GitHub Actions whenever changes are pushed to main.

Adding New Content

Add a blog post

./_scripts/new_post.sh "Your Post Title"              # commentary/insights post
./_scripts/new_post.sh "Your Post Title" --tutorial    # Python tutorial post

Or create a file in _posts/ manually. This is the actual pattern every current post follows — copy it, don't improvise a new one:

---
title: "Your Post Title"
date: YYYY-MM-DD
categories: [insights]
tags: [python, tutorial, hydrology]   # include "tutorial" only for the Python how-to series
excerpt: "One or two sentences. Shown on the homepage 'Latest Insights' cards and /insights/."
header:
  overlay_color: "#0f172a"
  overlay_filter: 0.7
  overlay_image: /images/pano1.jpg     # or a topical image from /images/
read_time: true
---

A few conventions worth knowing before you write:

• Don't set layout:. It defaults to single via _config.yml, which is what every real post relies on for the theme's masthead/sidebar/hero rendering. Setting layout: post (the old default in this script, now fixed) breaks that.
• tags containing tutorial is what routes a post onto the /python/ page as well as /insights/ — see _pages/python.md and _pages/insights.md, both of which filter on it. Nothing else about a tutorial post is structurally different.
• Images go in /images/ named YYYY-MM_short-topic-slug.png (or .jpg), matching the post's date. Reference in-post with a <figure>/<figcaption> block — see any recent post's markdown for the pattern.
• Code-heavy posts get a companion notebook under notebooks/NN_slug/ (see the Python tutorial series). Not required for commentary posts.
• A post claiming a specific technical standard is correct (ARR 2019 tables, code validated against a reference implementation, etc.) should actually be validated before publishing — run the code, check the numbers, don't take a draft's claim on faith. _drafts/ is scaffolding, not content; treat any bracketed _[placeholder text]_ as unwritten, not "mostly done."

Content backlog

_pages/resources/content-ideas.md (excluded from the build, so it's a private working note) tracks source material for future posts — currently the unused LinkedIn material from a September 2026 content audit. Check there before starting from a blank page.

Add a page

Create a markdown file under _pages/ with front matter, e.g.:

---
layout: single
title: "Page Name"
permalink: /page-name/
author_profile: true
---

License

This project is open source and available under the MIT License.

Contact

• GitHub: @lmillard79
• LinkedIn: Lindsay Millard
• Email: lindsay.millard@outlook.com.au

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