Previewing the site locally

The site is built with Jekyll. To preview it on your own Mac, you run a small local web server that builds the site and serves it at a private address only you can see (http://localhost:4000). Changes show up when you refresh.

One-time setup (do this once)

Open Terminal (press ⌘+Space, type “Terminal”, hit Enter) and run each line:

  1. Install Homebrew (skip if you already have it): 
    /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
  2. Install a modern Ruby: 
    brew install ruby
  3. Tell your Mac to use that Ruby (then close and reopen Terminal): 
    echo 'export PATH="/opt/homebrew/opt/ruby/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc
  4. Go into the site folder and install its dependencies: 
    cd "~/Desktop/mesra web/mesra-site"
gem install bundler
bundle install

Every time you want to preview

cd "~/Desktop/mesra web/mesra-site"
bundle exec jekyll serve --livereload

Then open http://localhost:4000 in your browser. Leave Terminal running. With --livereload, the page refreshes automatically each time a file is saved. Press Ctrl+C in Terminal to stop the server when you’re done.

Workflow

  1. I edit files in mesra-site.
  2. You refresh localhost:4000 to see the change.
  3. Happy with it? Commit + push in GitHub Desktop → live in ~1–2 min.

Notes: