Session Handoff — raghadalsaka.github.io

Last updated: May 2026

Goal

Maintain Raghad Alsaka’s academic website at raghadalsaka.com so that it:

1. Stays up to date with the upstream Academic Pages Jekyll template
2. Accurately reflects the current CV at all times — no placeholders, no stale information, no invented content
3. Remains clean and professional for university job applications

The site is a GitHub Pages Jekyll site. The repo is: https://github.com/raghadalsaka/raghadalsaka.github.io

Current State of the Code (May 2026)

Branch: master — fully up to date with origin/master

Recent commits:

• 1817aa4 Merge branch ‘master’ (pulled automated talkmap update from GitHub Actions)
• 8fe9f6f Merge template-sync-academicpages into master
• 14f2f55 Update website content to match new CV (May 2026)
• 027b7f0 Automated update of talk locations (GitHub Actions bot)
• 7ebd236 Template sync academicpages (#1) (GitHub PR merge)
• ac383ac Fix JS module error: add type=”module” to main.min.js
• 425f2ef Sync template from upstream Academic Pages

What was done this session:

Template sync (from upstream Academic Pages)

• Added new dark/light theme system: 12 new SCSS theme files in _sass/theme/
• Added _layouts/cv-layout.html (new layout for JSON-based CV pages)
• Added _sass/layout/_json_cv.scss
• Added assets/js/theme.js (Plotly chart theme exports for dark/light mode)
• Updated _layouts/single.html with bibtex download support
• Updated _includes/author-profile.html with new platform links and performance fix
• Updated _includes/social-share.html with Bluesky and Mastodon buttons
• Updated _includes/scripts.html: added type="module" to the main.min.js script tag (see bug below), added comments-providers/scripts.html include
• Updated assets/css/main.scss to dual light/dark theme import system
• Updated Gemfile with connection_pool 2.5.0
• Updated most other _includes/, _layouts/, _sass/, assets/js/ files from upstream

Content updates (from CV)

• _pages/about.md: Rewritten — completed Ph.D. (May 2026), research interests, correct education dates
• _pages/cv.md: Full rewrite — all CV sections, no placeholders, no emoji
• _config.yml: Updated description and bio; cleared placeholder Google Scholar and ResearchGate URLs
• _data/navigation.yml: Added “Talks” to main nav
• _teaching/2023-fall-edci321.md: Updated title, type, body; removed emoji and “Currently Ongoing”
• _teaching/2024-spring-edci409.md: Updated role to Co-Teacher / Teaching Support
• _teaching/2024-fall-edci201.md: New — EDCI 201/EDCI 550: Contexts in Education
• _talks/2026-04-01-aera-2026.md: New — AERA 2026 Best Paper Award presentation

Placeholder/demo content removed

• 4 template publications (Paper Title Number 1–4)
• 4 template talks (UC San Francisco, Berkeley, London, Los Angeles)
• 2 template portfolio items (portfolio-1.md, portfolio-2.html)

Files Actively Being Maintained

These are the files that change with each CV update:

These template/infrastructure files are updated only when syncing the upstream template:

• _includes/, _layouts/, _sass/, assets/js/, assets/css/
• Gemfile, package.json, Dockerfile, docker-compose.yaml

These personal files are never overwritten by template syncs:

• CNAME (raghadalsaka.com)
• images/ (profile photo, favicons)
• files/ (CV PDF, paper PDFs)
• _posts/ (blog posts)
• _data/authors.yml, _data/ui-text.yml

Everything We Tried and Fixed

Bug: Uncaught SyntaxError: Cannot use import statement outside a module

• What happened: After the template sync, the site threw a JS error on every page.
• Root cause: The upstream main.min.js now bundles Plotly.js and includes an ES module import statement (in assets/js/_main.js line 57: import { plotlyDarkLayout, plotlyLightLayout } from './theme.js'). Loading the bundle with a plain <script> tag instead of <script type="module"> caused the browser to reject it.
• Fix: Updated _includes/scripts.html to use type="module" on the main.min.js script tag — matching the upstream version we had missed in the initial sync.
• File: _includes/scripts.html

Issue: Push to master rejected after merging branch locally

• What happened: After merging template-sync-academicpages into local master and pushing, git rejected the push because the remote master had already merged the branch as a GitHub PR, plus an automated talkmap commit from GitHub Actions.
• Why: The PR was merged on GitHub before we added the CV content updates commit to the branch. So the remote had the template sync changes but not the CV changes.
• Fix: git pull origin master --no-rebase to merge in the automated talkmap commit cleanly, then pushed. No content conflicts.

Note: future: false in _config.yml

• The config has future: false, which suppresses posts/talks with a future date. The AERA 2026 talk is dated 2026-04-01, which is in the past as of May 2026, so it displays correctly. Watch for this if adding future-dated entries.

What Still Needs Manual Action

These items are missing from the site because the CV had placeholders for them:

Next Steps When Given an Updated CV

When Raghad provides a new version of her CV, follow this checklist:

1. Check for completed education

• If Ph.D. is listed with a new date, update _pages/about.md, _pages/cv.md, and _config.yml bio.

2. Check for new publications

• Any paper with a full citation (author, year, title, journal, volume, pages) → create _publications/YYYY-MM-DD-slug.md
• Use the front matter format:

  ---
  title: "Full Paper Title"
  collection: publications
  category: manuscripts   # or: conferences, books
  permalink: /publication/YYYY-MM-DD-slug
  excerpt: 'One sentence description.'
  date: YYYY-MM-DD
  venue: 'Journal or Conference Name'
  paperurl: '/files/filename.pdf'   # if PDF is available
  citation: 'Alsaka, R. (Year). "Title." <i>Venue</i>. Vol(Issue).'
  ---
  

• Skip any entry that still has [Year], [Title], or other placeholders.
• Once real publications exist, add “Publications” back to _data/navigation.yml.

3. Check for new conference presentations

• Any presentation with a confirmed year and location → create _talks/YYYY-MM-DD-slug.md
• Use the front matter format:

  ---
  title: "Presentation Title"
  collection: talks
  type: "Conference Paper Presentation"   # or: Poster, Invited Talk, etc.
  permalink: /talks/YYYY-MM-DD-slug
  venue: "Conference Name"
  date: YYYY-MM-DD
  location: "City, State"
  ---
  

4. Check for new teaching entries

• Any new course → create _teaching/YYYY-semester-course.md
• Match the front matter pattern in existing teaching files.

5. Update _pages/cv.md and _pages/about.md

• For any section that changed: awards, experience, certifications, memberships, skills.
• Never invent or carry over placeholder text from the CV.

6. Update _config.yml if social links changed

• Google Scholar, ResearchGate, LinkedIn, email.

7. Commit and push

git add <specific files>
git commit -m "Update website content — [month year]"
git push origin master

How to Preview Locally

Ruby is not installed on this machine. Use Docker (requires Docker Desktop to be running):

docker-compose up
# then open http://localhost:4000

Or, if Ruby/Bundler is installed:

bundle install
bundle exec jekyll serve

GitHub Pages will also build and validate the site automatically on every push to master.

Upstream Template Sync (future)

When the Academic Pages template has major updates worth pulling in:

git checkout -b template-sync-YYYY-MM
git fetch upstream master
# selectively checkout updated template files:
git checkout upstream/master -- _layouts/ _includes/ _sass/ assets/js/ assets/css/main.scss Gemfile
# do NOT overwrite: _config.yml, _data/, _pages/, _publications/, _talks/, _teaching/, _posts/, images/, files/, CNAME
git push -u origin template-sync-YYYY-MM
# open PR on GitHub, check build passes, then merge

The upstream remote should already be configured:

git remote -v
# upstream  https://github.com/academicpages/academicpages.github.io.git