Troubleshooting & General Tips

  1. When trying to identify what has gone wrong with your website, work backwards from the last change that you made.
  2. Keep the “Code” tab open in one browser window where you’re making edits, the “Actions” tab open in a second window so you can see the results of your edits, and the public-facing website ([yourusername].github.io) open in a third window so you can see what users will see.

The “Actions” tab has a running log of how the changes you’ve made to your files match up with what is published for users to see. Each change you make creates a “workflow” run, or a series of processes that interprets your metadata and images as web pages.

A green icon means the workflow run was successful. A yellow icon means the workflow run is still going. A red icon mean the publication step ran into some issues.

There are a few things you can do to make error checking easier.

  1. While you’re learning, commit changes to 1 file at a time and check the Actions tab to make sure your changes have successfully published.
  2. Open up the error reporting completely to see if a specific file is named as a problem.

As always, before manipulating/editing your files, be sure to make a backup!

“Toolbox” Folder

One strategy to save time and effort in the maintenance of your archive is to have a “toolbox” folder for storing templates, links, excerpts of the docs, etc. We recommend at least keeping a .yml template for metadata creation, since .yml formatting is notoriously specific. You may also want to keep text files that have useful links to resources like this documentation, other community archives, or other sites that may be related to your community. This is also an excellent location to keep backups of files that are important for your archive.

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