IoT & SE Research Lab Website

Source for the lab website: team, projects, and publications.

Live site: https://mptcp-freebsd.github.io/lab-website/

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Stack

• Hugo extended (CI uses 0.165.0)
• Hugo Blox Builder (blox-bootstrap/v5)
• Markdown content, SCSS in assets/scss/custom.scss
• GitHub Pages via .github/workflows/hugo.yml

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Develop locally

Prerequisites

• Hugo extended 0.165.x (the extended build is required for SCSS)
• Go 1.15+ (Hugo modules)
• Git

Confirm:

hugo version   # should say "extended"
go version

Run

git clone https://github.com/MPTCP-FreeBSD/lab-website.git
cd lab-website
hugo mod get
hugo server -D --bind 127.0.0.1 --port 1313 --disableFastRender

Open http://127.0.0.1:1313/lab-website/. The /lab-website/ prefix matches the GitHub Pages project URL (baseURL in hugo.yaml).

--disableFastRender rebuilds the whole page on save, which is what you want when editing layouts or SCSS.

Production build (optional)

hugo --gc --minify

Output lands in public/ (gitignored). CI does this on every push to main.

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Config YAML

Hugo reads everything under config/_default/. Edit these; do not add a root config.yaml.

config/_default/hugo.yaml

Site-wide Hugo settings.

Key	What it is
title	Browser tab / default site name
baseURL	Public origin. Must stay https://mptcp-freebsd.github.io/lab-website/ while the site is a project Pages site, or asset URLs break. The Actions workflow also passes --baseURL from Pages.
pagination.pagerSize	Items per page on listings (projects, publications)
permalinks	URL shapes for authors, tags, categories, publication types
outputs	JSON is omitted on purpose (search is off). Add it back only if search is re-enabled.
taxonomies	tags, categories, publication_types, authors

config/_default/params.yaml

Hugo Blox / site chrome: appearance, header, footer, features.

Block	What it is
appearance	theme_day: lab and empty theme_night keep the site light-only. font: lab selects Figtree + Open Sans.
marketing.seo	Organisation name for metadata. Analytics IDs go here if needed.
header.navbar	Logo, alignment (r = right), no search, no day/night switcher, highlight the active nav item.
footer	Selects layouts/partials/components/footers/lab.html. Acknowledgement of Country, footer Contact URL (/contact/), which menu to mirror (main), copyright notice.
locale	Date format (Jan 2, 2006).
features.search.provider	Empty = search off. Keep in sync with header.navbar.show_search.
features.avatar.shape	square (no round portraits).
features.repository	Placeholder GitHub URL for “edit this page” style links if you turn those on.

Footer copy (acknowledgement, copyright) is edited here, not in the HTML partial.

config/_default/menus.yaml

Navbar (and footer nav, which mirrors main).

main:
  - name: "Publications"
    url: "publication"  # path under the site; no leading slash needed except Home
    weight: 50           # lower = further left

Home must stay url: "/". Weights control order.

config/_default/languages.yaml

Language packs. Only en is enabled (languageCode: en-us). Uncomment the zh (or other) stub to add a second language and a matching contentDir.

config/_default/module.yaml

Hugo modules. The theme is:

imports:
  - path: github.com/HugoBlox/hugo-blox-builder/modules/blox-bootstrap/v5

Version is pinned in go.mod. Run hugo mod get after changing this.

.github/workflows/hugo.yml

GitHub Actions: build Hugo 0.165.0 extended and deploy to Pages.

• Triggers: push to main, or Run workflow in the Actions tab
• Jobs: build (install Hugo → checkout → hugo --minify) then deploy
• Hugo version: HUGO_VERSION at the top of the build job — bump this if you upgrade Hugo locally
• Pages source is GitHub Actions (repo Settings → Pages)

A custom domain needs static/CNAME plus a baseURL change in hugo.yaml.

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Content

All of this is Markdown under content/. Front matter is YAML.

Path	Page	Notes
content/_index.md	Home	Landing page. sections: lists blocks (dc_hero, dc_about, dc_areas, dc_projects, dc_cta). Block options are documented in layouts/partials/blocks/.
content/tour/index.md	Tour	dc_banner + repeating dc_about photo/text splits.
content/people/index.md	People	Banner + people widget. Groups come from each author’s user_groups.
content/authors/<Name>/	Profiles	_index.md + avatar.jpg / .jpeg. user_groups must match a group listed on the People page (e.g. Principal Investigator, Researchers, Alumni).
content/Projects/	Projects	_index.md lists them. Each project is content/Projects/<slug>/ (page bundle: index.md, images, PDFs). cascade.type: project is set on the listing so singles use layouts/project/single.html.
content/publication/	Publications	One folder per paper (index.md). Listing filters live in layouts/section/publication.html.
content/contact/index.md	Contact	Banner + dc_contacts (names, emails, phones).

Homepage images are loaded from assets/media/ (see dc_hero / dc_about image.filename). Page-bundle images sit next to that page’s index.md.

Adding a person

1. Create content/authors/Firstname/_index.md (copy an existing profile).
2. Add avatar.jpg or avatar.jpeg in the same folder.
3. Set user_groups to a group that already appears on content/people/index.md.

Adding a project

content/Projects/my-project/
  index.md
  cover.jpg

Keep image.filename and abstract (or summary) in the front matter so the listing card has a picture and blurb.

Projects are ordered manually, not by date: set weight in the front matter (lower first) on the homepage flagship grid, the /projects/ listing, and the related-projects widget on each project page. Give every project a distinct weight.

Publications from Google Scholar

getpublications.py pulls papers for the Scholar IDs in that file and writes under content/publication/. Needs requests and scholarly. Review the generated Markdown before committing.

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Theme and layouts

File	Role
assets/scss/custom.scss	All custom CSS. Loaded last, so it wins over Bootstrap and Hugo Blox. Palette is $brand-* / $accent-* at the top.
data/themes/lab.toml	Colour tokens Hugo Blox injects. Keep in sync with custom.scss if you retune the palette.
data/fonts/lab.toml	Figtree headings, Open Sans body; fonts are self-hosted in static/fonts/.
layouts/partials/blocks/	Homepage / landing blocks (dc_hero, dc_banner, dc_cta, …).
layouts/partials/components/headers/navbar.html	Navbar, including which item is active.
layouts/partials/components/footers/lab.html	Footer markup. Copy comes from params.yaml.
layouts/section/projects.html	Projects listing.
layouts/section/publication.html	Publications listing + filters.
layouts/project/single.html	Individual project page.

The site is light-only. Do not set appearance.theme_night in params.yaml or the OS dark-mode switcher will repaint the whole site.

Do not set design.background.color on homepage blocks — it paints over the section bands.

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Deploy

Push to main. Actions builds and publishes to https://mptcp-freebsd.github.io/lab-website/.

To ship a Hugo upgrade, change HUGO_VERSION in .github/workflows/hugo.yml and match it locally.

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License

MIT. See LICENSE.md.

Maintained by the IoT & SE Research Lab.