Strata Academic

Strata Academic is a Jekyll theme for academic personal homepages that renders a clean, mobile-friendly site from a single Markdown index file and can be published directly through GitHub Pages. Created by yaoyao-liu, the theme adapts the HTML5 UP Strata design into a Jekyll gem, released under a CC0 license and available as strata-academic on RubyGems.

What is Strata Academic?

Strata Academic is an open-source Jekyll theme built for academic personal websites. It takes a Markdown file named index.md plus optional configuration values in _config.yml and generates a static homepage with sections for publications, research, and personal links. The theme requires Jekyll 3.5 or newer, can be deployed automatically via GitHub Pages using the remote_theme setting, and is maintained by yaoyao-liu.

Key Features

• GitHub Pages deployment — Add remote_theme: yaoyao-liu/strata-academic to _config.yml and GitHub Pages builds the site on every push.
• Markdown-driven content — The entire homepage is edited through index.md, so adding publications or research updates requires no HTML knowledge.
• Responsive layout — The theme's mobile-friendly design adapts the homepage for smartphones and tablets.
• Configurable metadata — Set title, affiliation, email, google_scholar, github_link, linkedin, avatar, favicon, google_analytics, description, and canonical directly in _config.yml.
• Custom stylesheet support — Override the default CSS by creating /assets/css/style.scss and importing the theme's styles, then adding your own rules.
• Layout override — Copy the original _layouts/homepage.html from the repository into your own site to fully customize the HTML structure.
• Google Analytics integration — Provide a tracking ID via the google_analytics variable to monitor site traffic.
• Free license — Released under Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal, permitting unrestricted use, modification, and distribution.

Who is it for?

• Academic researchers and PhD students — Create a professional homepage that lists publications, affiliation, and contact details in minutes.
• University faculty — Showcase research interests and lab output on a clean site that can be hosted free on GitHub Pages.
• Developers with scholarly profiles — Link Google Scholar and GitHub profiles through config variables to present both academic and coding work.

What can you do with Strata Academic?

• Publish a publication list — Write papers as Markdown in index.md and display them with links to Google Scholar.
• Showcase research projects — Use the single-page design to describe projects and link out to repositories or project pages.
• Establish a professional web presence — Connect a custom domain via the canonical variable and measure visits with Google Analytics.

How does Strata Academic work?

For local development, clone the repository, run bundle install and then bundle exec jekyll server; the site will be available at http://localhost:4000 and HTML output appears in the _site folder. For a hosted site, add remote_theme: yaoyao-liu/strata-academic to _config.yml and push your repository to GitHub — GitHub Pages handles the build automatically. All content lives in index.md, and the theme generates the complete homepage from that file.

Alternatives

• Minimal Light — Another Jekyll academic-homepage theme by the same author, promoted from this project's README as a simpler lightweight option.
• pages-themes/minimal — GitHub Pages' built-in minimal theme, acknowledged in the project's source list.

FAQ

Is Strata Academic free to use?

Yes, the theme is released under the Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal license, which waives copyright and allows free use, modification, and redistribution without attribution.

Does Strata Academic work with GitHub Pages?

Yes. Add remote_theme: yaoyao-liu/strata-academic to your _config.yml and push the repository; GitHub Pages will build and host the site. The theme requires Jekyll 3.5 or newer, which GitHub Pages provides.

How do I edit the content of my homepage?

Edit the index.md file in the root of your site. The theme renders Markdown from that file into the homepage HTML, and you can add or update publications, research, and personal information there.

Can we customize the design?

Yes. You can create /assets/css/style.scss to add custom CSS on top of the theme's styles, or copy the original _layouts/homepage.html into your site's _layouts directory and edit it to change the HTML structure.