Agent Instructions for ajoydas.github.io

Repository Summary

This is a personal portfolio website for Ajoy Das, built as a Jekyll-based GitHub Pages site using the portfolYOU remote theme. It is deployed at https://ajoydas.com. The site includes a blog, professional/hobby/coursework project showcases, certifications, skills, research publications, activities, photography gallery, and an about/experience timeline.

Type: Static site (Jekyll)
Language: Markdown, HTML, Liquid, SCSS, YAML
Theme: yousinix/portfolYOU (remote theme via jekyll-remote-theme)
Hosting: GitHub Pages
Domain: ajoydas.com (configured via CNAME file)

Build & Development

Prerequisites

• Ruby >= 3.x (tested with 3.4.1)
• Bundler >= 2.x (tested with 2.6.2)

Bootstrap (first time)

bundle install

Always run bundle install before building if gems have not been installed.

Build

bundle exec jekyll build

Generates the static site into _site/. Build completes in ~4 seconds.

Serve Locally (development)

bundle exec jekyll serve --watch

Serves at http://localhost:4000. The --watch flag enables auto-regeneration on file changes. Note: _config.yml changes require a restart.

Known Build Notes

• A warning To use retry middleware with Faraday v2.0+, install faraday-retry gem may appear. It is benign and does not affect the build.
• The remote theme is fetched on each build. Builds require internet access.
• The _site/ directory is the build output and is gitignored. Do not edit files inside _site/ directly.

Project Layout

Root Files

| File | Purpose | |——|———| | _config.yml | Main Jekyll configuration: site title, URL, description, author info, analytics, navbar, collections, plugins | | CNAME | Custom domain (ajoydas.com) | | Gemfile | Ruby dependencies (github-pages gem) | | README.md | Project overview, development guide, and content management instructions | | robots.txt | SEO: allows all crawlers, points to sitemap |

Key Directories

Content Conventions

Blog Posts (_posts/):

---
title: "Post Title"
tags: [tag1, tag2]
style: border
color: primary  # primary|success|info|warning|danger|secondary
description:
---

• File naming: YYYY-MM-DD-slug.md
• Cover images go in assets/img/posts/ and are referenced as /assets/img/posts/filename.png
• The first <img> tag in a post is automatically extracted and used as the blog card cover image (via _includes/blog/post-card.html)

Projects (_projects/):

---
name: Project Name
type: professional  # professional|hobby|coursework
tools: [Tool1, Tool2]
image: ../assets/img/projects/image.png
description: Description text (HTML supported)
external_url: https://example.com
---

• File naming: (NN) ProjectName.md where NN is a sort-weight number (lower = higher priority)

Pages (pages/):

• Front matter includes weight for navbar ordering (lower weight = appears earlier)
• Pages listed in nav_exclude in _config.yml are hidden from the navbar

Photography (_data/photos.yml):

• Data-driven page: all photo metadata is in _data/photos.yml, template is in pages/photography.md
• Photos are organized into categories (mountains, europe, cities, coasts, nature)
• Each category shows 8 photos initially; a “Show All” button reveals the rest
• Photos use GLightbox for lightbox viewing with zoom/touch/drag support (loaded conditionally via glightbox: true front matter)
• Images: full-size in assets/img/photography/converted/, thumbnails in assets/img/photography/thumbs/
• Use scripts/process-photos.sh <input_dir> to batch-process new photos (HEIC/JPG/PNG → JPEG, generates converted + thumbs + YAML)
• Input files must be named category - description.ext (e.g., mountains - Moraine Lake.heic)
• Photos can also be added manually: place JPEGs in converted/ and thumbs/, then add entries to photos.yml
• Copyright notice is displayed at the bottom of the photography page

Navigation

The navbar is generated dynamically from pages sorted by weight. Projects have a dropdown menu (Professional, Coursework, Hobby) hardcoded in _includes/navbar.html. The AGENTS.md file is excluded from the navbar via nav_exclude in _config.yml.

SEO & Social Sharing

• Open Graph tags: og:type, og:title, og:description, og:image (absolute URL), og:url, og:site_name — in _includes/head.html
• Twitter cards: summary_large_image with title, description, and image — in _includes/head.html
• JSON-LD Person schema: Structured data with name, URL, image, jobTitle, worksFor, and sameAs (LinkedIn, GitHub, Google Scholar) — in _includes/head.html
• Sitemap: Auto-generated by jekyll-sitemap plugin at /sitemap.xml
• robots.txt: Allows all crawlers, references sitemap
• Google Analytics: Enabled via GA4 tracking ID G-3BD4D1PDK3 in _config.yml
• site.url: Set to https://ajoydas.com in _config.yml for absolute URLs

Custom Overrides from Remote Theme

These files override the remote theme’s defaults:

Validation

After making changes:

1. Run bundle exec jekyll build and verify it completes without errors
2. Run bundle exec jekyll serve --watch and check the page at http://localhost:4000
3. Verify new blog posts appear on the /blog/ page
4. Verify new projects appear on the correct project listing page
5. Check that the navbar displays all expected pages
6. For photography changes: verify photo count, show-more buttons, and lightbox functionality
7. For SEO changes: check _site/sitemap.xml and inspect <head> for OG/JSON-LD tags

There is no CI/CD pipeline configured. The site is deployed automatically by GitHub Pages from the default branch. There are no linters, test suites, or pre-commit hooks.

Important Notes

• The site uses a remote theme (yousinix/portfolYOU). If you need to override theme includes or layouts, copy the file from the theme repo into the local _includes/ or _layouts/ directory with the same name.
• The landing page (pages/index.md) uses `<div class="row justify-content-center align-items-center p-4">
  

  Ajoy Das

  Senior Software Developer
  Corvian, Canada 🇨🇦
  

  💻 Google Cloud Certified Professional
  ☸️ Certified Kubernetes Application Developer
  🔐 Okta Certified Developer

</div> ` — this is now a local override in _includes/landing.html (not the remote theme version).

• Google Analytics is enabled (G-3BD4D1PDK3). The tracking ID is in _config.yml.
• The jemoji plugin is enabled for GitHub-style emoji support in markdown.
• The jekyll-sitemap plugin generates /sitemap.xml automatically.
• Custom CSS for the photography gallery, blog cards, and show-more pagination is in assets/css/style.scss.
• The photography page uses CSS specificity a.photo-item.photo-hidden to override the base a.photo-item { display: block } rule for the show-more feature.
• Blog cards in two-column layout extract the first <img src> from post content for cover images while using strip_html on the text excerpt.
• The scripts/process-photos.sh script is Bash 3.x compatible (macOS default) and uses sips for image conversion — no extra dependencies needed.

Trust these instructions. Only perform exploratory searches if the information above is incomplete or found to be incorrect.