How to setup your personal github blog in minutes?

Setting up a GitHub blog took me quite a bit of time when I first tried it.
But if you follow this guide carefully, you can probably have your blog running in just 10 minutes!

I’m using the amazing cotes2020/jekyll-theme-chirpy — a clean, modern, and well-documented template.
However, there were a few small things that weren’t immediately obvious, so I’ll point them out here to save you some frustration.

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Steps to Set Up Your Blog

1. Follow the Official Guide

First, head over to the official Getting Started guide from Chirpy.
It walks you through:

• Creating your GitHub repository
• Setting up your local development environment (I personally used the Dev Container approach)

Make sure to follow the steps carefully.

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2. Watch Out for Missing Folders

After setting things up, I noticed some important folders were missing.
This is briefly mentioned in the README.md file generated in your repository — but it’s easy to overlook if you’re rushing.

The missing folders are:

• _data
• _includes
• _javascript
• _layouts
• assets

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3. Additional Steps

To fix the missing folders, do the following:

• Manually copy the missing folders and files from the Chirpy GitHub repository.

You don’t need to copy everything. Some notes:

• In _data/locales, I only copied over en.yml.
• In _includes/analytics, I only included google.html.

Feel free to adjust based on your needs.

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4. Update Configuration Files

After copying everything, update the following files to personalize your blog:

• _data/authors.yml
• _data/contact.yml
• _config.yml

These files control your site’s metadata, author information, and settings.

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5. Customize Your Favicon

Next, update your site’s favicon to make it truly yours.
Follow the favicon customization guide provided by Chirpy.

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6. Set Up Comments

To enable commenting on your blog, follow this great guide from Patrick Thurmond.

Here’s a quick summary:

• Go to giscus.app to generate the configuration.
• From the generated JavaScript snippet, copy the value from:
  • data-repo
  • data-repo-id
  • data-category
  • data-category-id
• Update these values under the comments section in your _config.yml.

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Done! 🎉

That’s it!
Your personal blog is now live at https://your-github-username.github.io.

Enjoy blogging!