Ryan Fraser

Ryan Fraser

PhD student in Economics & Business, University of Michigan.

CLAUDE.md

CLAUDE.md

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

What this is

Personal academic website for Ryan Fraser (PhD student, Economics & Business, University of Michigan), built on AcademicPages — a Jekyll theme that is itself a fork of Minimal Mistakes. Most of _layouts/, _includes/, _sass/, and assets/js/ is upstream theme code; the site-specific content and configuration is a small subset (see “Where to edit”).

The site owner is non-technical (no web/dev background). Prefer low-maintenance solutions and explain changes in plain terms.

Build & deploy

  • Hosting: GitHub Pages, classic auto-build (there is no Actions workflow). The git remote is RCFraser/rcfraser.github.io; pushing to the published branch (currently main) triggers GitHub’s built-in Jekyll build and serves at https://rcfraser.github.io. baseurl is "" (root of the domain).
  • There is no separate build step, no CI, and no staging. The loop is: edit → commit → push → GitHub rebuilds the live site.
  • Local preview is not currently set up — Ruby/Bundler is not installed on this machine (bundle is absent). The Gemfile is ready for it, so if local preview is wanted: bundle install, then bundle exec jekyll serve (http://localhost:4000). Jekyll does not reload _config.yml changes without restarting the server.
  • Plugins run in GitHub Pages “safe mode”: only the whitelisted plugins in _config.yml (jekyll-feed, jekyll-sitemap, jekyll-redirect-from, jemoji, jekyll-gist, jekyll-paginate) take effect on the live build. Plugins outside that set are silently ignored.

CV (downloadable PDF)

The CV is a PDF compiled from cv/cv.tex, which is the single source of truth. There is no HTML CV page.

  • Build: pdflatex -interaction=nonstopmode -output-directory=files cv/cv.tex, then rename files/cv.pdf → files/Ryan_Fraser_CV.pdf and delete the stray aux files (.aux/.log/.out are gitignored). MiKTeX is installed locally.
  • The nav “CV” link (_data/navigation.yml) and the About-page link (_pages/about.md) both point at /files/Ryan_Fraser_CV.pdf.
  • To update the CV: edit cv/cv.tex, recompile, recommit the PDF. Do not reintroduce an HTML CV page.

Where to edit (content vs. theme)

Site content/config — edit freely:

  • _config.yml — site title/URL, the author: block (powers the sidebar profile and which social icons appear), collections, and per-type defaults.
  • _data/navigation.yml — the top-nav links.
  • _pages/about.md — the homepage (permalink: /).
  • _publications/, _talks/, _teaching/ — content, one Markdown file per item (see “Collections”).
  • cv/cv.tex, files/ (downloads), images/ (headshot profile.jpg, favicons).

Theme internals — change cautiously; these are upstream AcademicPages code:

  • _layouts/, _includes/, _sass/, assets/js/.

How pages render

Layout inheritance: compress (HTML-minify wrapper) → default (the HTML skeleton: head, masthead, ``, footer, scripts) → one of:

  • single — standard content page (author sidebar + article body). The default for _pages, _publications, _teaching, _portfolio, _posts (assigned via defaults in _config.yml, so individual files rarely set layout).
  • archive — listing page (sidebar + title + the page’s own body). The collection-index pages override their front matter to this and put their own Liquid for loops in the body.
  • talk — per-talk page (shows talk type / venue / location). Default for _talks.

`` sets base_path = site.url + site.baseurl; internal links and assets are written https://rcfraser.github.io/.... The author sidebar appears whenever a page sets author_profile: true (sidebar.html → author-profile.html, driven by the author: block in _config.yml).

Collections (the content model)

Four collections, all output to /:collection/:path/. Each .md file is one item with YAML front matter.

  • _publications/ is repurposed as “Works in Progress.” Indexed by _pages/publications.html, whose permalink is /works-in-progress/ (also the nav label), rendered through archive-single.html. Front matter in use: title, collection: publications, permalink, date (used only for sorting — it is not displayed), excerpt (the coauthor line). Because these are unpublished they deliberately omit venue: archive-single.html only prints “Published in venue, year” when a venue exists. Optional citation / paperurl / slidesurl / bibtexurl fields unlock “Download …” links. To later split published papers from working papers, uncomment publication_category in _config.yml.
  • _talks/ — indexed by _pages/talks.html (/talks/) via archive-single-talk.html; each talk page uses the talk layout (talk_type, venue, location).
  • _teaching/ — indexed by _pages/teaching.html (/teaching/) via archive-single.html (type, venue, date).
  • _portfolio/, _posts/ — available from the theme but unused.

Theming

site_theme in _config.yml selects a palette (default, air, sunrise, mint, dirt, contrast), implemented in _sass/_themes.scss. A light/dark toggle (the sun icon in the masthead) is wired by assets/js/theme.js. assets/css/main.scss is the Sass entry point Jekyll compiles to /assets/css/main.css.

Notes

  • docs/buying-a-domain.md documents upgrading from rcfraser.github.io to a custom domain (recommended ryan-c-fraser.com, via Cloudflare DNS + a root CNAME file). No CNAME exists yet — the site is still on the github.io subdomain.
  • _config.yml force-includes _pages and files via include:, which is why PDFs in files/ are published.