Hosting a Website with St. Thomas GitHub Pages

Describes how members of the St. Thomas community can host simple course or personal websites using GitHub Pages through the University GitHub organization, including supported technologies, basic setup steps, and responsible use expectations.

Any member of the St. Thomas community can host simple websites through the St. Thomas GitHub organization using GitHub Pages. You have full control over your website. This can be used to host a website for your courses or for your personal interests.

(This system replaces the CourseWeb and PersonalWeb systems.)

1. STELAR ran a survey on student use of AI in late 2025 and created a simple single-page site to display the results:

https://universityofsaintthomas.github.io/Student-AI-Survey/

2. Professor Steve Laumakis first built his combined course/personal website on CourseWeb shortly after the turn of the millennium, and ported it smoothly over to GitHub Pages in the 2020s:

https://universityofsaintthomas.github.io/sjlaumakis/

 

GitHub Pages supports websites composed in HTML, Javascript, CSS, and/or Jekyll.

It does not support any server-side scripting (such as Node or PHP).

If you already have a St. Thomas GitHub account and know how to create and manage a repo, GitHub Pages is very easy to set up.

This article assumes you have already done these things.

1. Create a new repository. Give it a good name. The name will be used in the URL.
2. Place your website in the repository's root directory. (For example, if the landing page of your website is index.html, index.html should be in root.)
3. Make a git commit.
4. In the GitHub web console, go to your repo, then Settings >> Pages.
   1. For Visibility: keep Private initially
   2. For Source: keep Deploy From a Branch
   3. For Branch: main/master
   4. For Folder: keep the default "/ (root)".
   5. You can change these settings if you know what you're doing. 
5. Wait a few minutes for the deployment to finish, then refresh the page:
   1. 
   2. As you can see, it will initially deploy your website to an obscure URL like "supreme-karma-8uagdfgar.github.io."
   3. Test your website to make sure it works!
6.  [Optional] To activate the universityofsaintthomas.github.io URL and make your website public to the world, change GitHub Pages visibility from Private to Public:
   1. 
   2. There used to be a requirement that your entire repo needed to be made public as well. This is no longer required, and we actively discourage it.
7. Wait a few more minutes, then refresh again. Your website is now published! 

It really is that easy, and anyone at St. Thomas can do it!

 

All websites hosted through St. Thomas GitHub Pages must follow the St. Thomas Responsible Use Policy. No crimes, please!

 

Need help?

GitHub has a great quantity of official documentation about GitHub Pages.

More information about the St. Thomas GitHub environment (including guides, labs, website management, team management, repo creation, and more) can be found in GitHub Campus: Read Me First.

ITS is available to provide any assistance that you may need with the St. Thomas GitHub. Email techdesk@stthomas.edu to open a support ticket (cc jjheaney@stthomas.edu).