CLAUDE.md

This file provides guidance to Claude Code (claude.ai/code) when working with code in this repository.

Repository purpose

Personal academic website for Nicola Barban (Professor of Demography, University of Bologna), deployed to nicolabarban.com via GitHub Pages (see CNAME). The repo is a fork of the Minimal Mistakes Jekyll theme that has been customized with the user’s content; the upstream theme machinery still lives in the repo unchanged.

What is upstream vs. user content

Treat these as upstream theme files — usually do not edit when changing site content:

• _layouts/, _includes/, _sass/, assets/ — theme templates and styles
• docs/, test/ — theme demo site and test fixtures (excluded in _config.yml)
• CHANGELOG.md, README.md, minimal-mistakes-jekyll.gemspec, package.json, Rakefile, screenshot*.png — upstream theme metadata (the README.md is the theme’s, not the user’s site)

Treat these as user site content — edit these for site changes:

• index.md — home page
• about/, contact/, links/, news/, publications/, teaching/, photography/, laguna/ — top-level pages (each is an index.md or index.html)
• _config.yml — site configuration (title, author, social links, navigation defaults)
• _data/navigation.yml — masthead navigation links
• _data/ui-text.yml — translatable UI strings
• Barban_cvOctober2020.pdf, assets/images/ (user-supplied images), mailing.md, mailing_list_unibo.html

Common commands

This site is hosted on GitHub Pages, so production builds happen on GitHub’s side; local commands are only for previewing changes.

bundle install                  # install Ruby/Jekyll dependencies (run once)
bundle exec jekyll serve        # serve the actual site at http://localhost:4000
bundle exec jekyll build        # one-shot static build into _site/

The repo’s Rakefile provides bundle exec rake preview, but that task serves the theme’s test/ demo site, not this user’s site. Use jekyll serve to preview real changes to index.md, the page directories, and _config.yml.

Conventions to be aware of

• Permalinks for top-level pages are folder-based: a page lives at e.g. publications/index.md and is served at /publications/. The permalink in _config.yml (/:categories/:title/) only governs posts, not these pages — adding a new section means creating <section>/index.md with appropriate front matter.
• Navigation is driven by _data/navigation.yml, not by filesystem discovery. New top-level pages must be added there to appear in the masthead.
• Author/social config lives in _config.yml under author: and is rendered into every page via the author profile sidebar — change once there, not per-page.
• _config.yml is not reloaded by jekyll serve; restart the server after editing it.
• docs/ and test/ are explicitly excluded from the build (_config.yml exclude:); don’t put site content there.