social interaction lab — website guide

this is the lab website at socialinteractionlab.github.io. built with Jekyll and hosted on GitHub Pages. you don't need to know Jekyll deeply to maintain it — most tasks are just editing markdown files.

---

how the site is organized

_data/
  papers.yml    → all papers (edit this to add/update papers)
  team.yml      → all lab members, current + alumni (edit this to add/update people)
  settings.yml  → site-wide settings (colors, nav, etc.)
pages/
  people.html   → people page template
  papers.html   → papers page template
  news.html     → news page
  joining.html  → join us page
images/
  papers/         → thumbnail images for papers
  people/         → headshots for lab members
  group_YYYY_YYYY.jpg  → lab group photos for the photo album
_data/, _layouts/, _includes/, _sass/, css/, js/  → theme internals (rarely touch)

the two files you'll edit most: _data/papers.yml and _data/team.yml

---

adding a paper

open _data/papers.yml and add an entry at the top of the file (newest first):

- title: "Paper Title Here"
  year: "2026"
  journal: "Journal or Conference Name"
  authors: "Author1, Author2, & Author3"
  url: "https://link-to-pdf-or-preprint"

optional fields — only add what you have:

  materials: "https://github.com/..."
  dataset: "https://..."
  talk: "https://youtube.com/..."
  demo: "https://..."
  commentary: "https://..."
  precis: "https://..."
  image: "/images/papers/YourImage.png"
  context: "e.g. an earlier version appeared at CogSci 2025."

if you don't have a pdf link yet, just omit the url field entirely — no broken link will appear.

thumbnail images go in images/papers/. use CamelCase to match existing files (e.g. ConvoPacts.png)

---

adding a person

open _data/team.yml and add an entry under current:. the order field controls display order within each role group (lower = earlier).

  - name: "Full Name"
    role: "Graduate Students"
    order: 5
    website: "https://yourwebsite.com"
    image: "/images/people/yourphoto.jpg"
    bio: "One or two sentences about research interests."

role options (must match exactly, caps and all):

• Principal Investigator
• Post-Doctoral Scholar
• Lab Manager
• Graduate Students
• Research Assistants
• Lab Affilates

headshots go in images/people/. square crop, ideally 300×300px or bigger.

moving someone to alumni: remove their entry from current: and add under alumni::

  - name: "Full Name"
    year: 2025
    order: 1
    website: "https://..."
    note: "Full Name (Role, 2023–2025)"

year groups alumni by cohort (descending). order sorts within the year.

---

updating lab news

open pages/news.html and add an entry. pattern is:

<h1>2026</h1>

<p><b>Month, 2026: </b> We're excited to ...</p>

<br>

keep newest year at the top.

---

updating group photos

group photos live in images/ named group_YYYY_YYYY.jpg (e.g. group_2025_2026.jpg).

to add a new year's photo:

1. add the photo to images/ — name it group_YYYY_YYYY.jpg
2. open pages/people.html and add it in two places:
   • in the <div class="photo-main"> block: add a new <img id="photo-YYYY"> tag
   • in the <div class="photo-thumbnails"> block: add a new <div class="photo-thumb" data-year="YYYY"> entry
3. make the new photo the default: add class="visible" to its <img> and class="active" to its thumbnail (remove from the previous default)

---

local preview & deploying

the site auto-deploys via GitHub Pages whenever you push to main. workflow:

1. make changes on a branch
2. test locally with bundle exec jekyll serve
3. merge to main when happy — site updates in ~1 min

local setup (one-time, if not already done):

brew install ruby@3.3
echo 'export PATH="/opt/homebrew/opt/ruby@3.3/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc
source ~/.zshrc
gem install bundler
bundle install

then to preview:

bundle exec jekyll serve
# open http://localhost:4000