Academic Starter

A simple Hugo template for creating and maintaining a professional academic website.

View Live Demo →

Quick Start

1. Click Use this template → Create a new repository.
2. Go to Settings → Pages and set Source to GitHub Actions.
3. Edit data/profile.toml with your information.
4. Replace the profile image and static/files/cv.pdf.
5. Edit the Research, Teaching, and Talks pages as needed.
6. Commit your changes to main.

GitHub Actions will automatically build and publish the site.

Site Information

Most site-wide information is controlled from:

data/profile.toml

This includes your:

• name and academic title
• institution and contact information
• biography and education
• research interests
• profile image
• CV
• LinkedIn, Google Scholar, ORCID, and GitHub links

Profile Image

Place your image in:

static/images/

and update its path in data/profile.toml, for example:

avatar = "images/profile.jpg"

CV

Replace:

static/files/cv.pdf

with your own CV.

If you use a different filename, update its path in data/profile.toml:

cv = "files/my-cv.pdf"

The CV tab opens the PDF directly.

Edit Existing Pages

The starter includes:

content/research/_index.md
content/teaching/_index.md
content/talks/_index.md

Replace the example content with your own.

Add a Navigation Tab

Navigation is generated automatically.

For example, to add a Projects page, create:

content/projects/_index.md

with:

---
title: "Projects"
draft: false
menu: true
weight: 25
---

Add your project information here.

Lower weight values appear earlier in the navigation bar.

The default order is:

Research   10
Teaching   15
Talks      20

Set menu: false if you want the page to exist without appearing in the navigation bar.

Run Locally (optional)

Install Hugo, then run:

hugo server

On macOS, Hugo can be installed with:

brew install hugo

Open the local address shown in the terminal.

Repository Structure

data/profile.toml         # Personal and site-wide information

content/
├── research/             # Research page
├── teaching/             # Teaching page
└── talks/                # Talks page

static/
├── images/               # Profile image and other images
├── files/cv.pdf          # CV
└── css/                  # Site styling

layouts/                  # Hugo templates
.github/workflows/        # GitHub Pages deployment
hugo.toml                 # Hugo configuration

For normal use, you generally only need to edit data/profile.toml, files under content/, and your image/CV files.

Troubleshooting

If GitHub Actions reports:

Get Pages site failed

go to:

Settings → Pages → Build and deployment → Source → GitHub Actions

Then re-run the failed workflow from the Actions tab.

Acknowledgment

This template is built with Hugo by Harshit Bhatt.