So you want to launch a simple website but don’t want to have to go through the dull process of setting up yet another hosting package. There is an easier solution. If you just want to launch a simple static website you can use GitHub Pages to host your site for free.

Lets get started.

Note: This post assumes that you have a GitHub account and some basic knowledge of the version control system Git.

Create Your GitHub Repository

The files that make up your website will need to be stored within a GitHub repository. If you’re creating a website to promote one of your existing GitHub projects you can add the website files to a new branch, otherwise you can just setup a new repo for your site.

Note: If you are not adding your website files to an existing repo make sure that you setup a new repo before continuing.

Now open up terminal (command prompt on Windows) and make sure that you have a copy of your GitHub repo on your computer. Once you got your local copy, move into the project folder using the cd command.

// Retrieve a copy of your GitHub repo.  
    git clone https://github.com/user/repository.git
    // Move into that directory.
    cd repository

Note: Make sure that you change the clone URL to the URL of your GitHub repo. This can be found on the main project page.

Creating an Orphan Branch

Now you need to create a new orphan branch within your repo that will hold all of your website files.

This new branch should be called gh-pages.

git checkout --orphan gh-pages

If you already had files in the master branch of your GitHub repo you now need to delete these from the new gh-pages branch. To do this you can use the following command:

git rm -rf .

Adding Your Website Files

Now that your repo has been properly setup it’s time to add all of the HTML, CSS and JavaScript files that make up your website. Once you have added these to your repo you need to commit the changes. To do this you can use the following command.

git commit -a -m "Adding pages"

Note: The -a flag is shorthand for git add .

Pushing Your Changes to GitHub

Okay so you’ve got all your files where they need to be. The only thing left to do now is to push the new gh-pages branch up to GitHub. You do this using the git push command.

git push origin gh-pages

That’s it! Your website should now be available at http://username.github.io/repository/.

Using a Custom Domain

The last thing I want to cover in this post is how you can use your own domain name with your new GitHub-hosted website.

First you will need to create a new file in your GitHub repo called CNAME that contains the domain name (or subdomain) that you wish to use. This file should be placed in the gh-pages branch if you are using project-pages (as we have been in this post). If you are using user-pages the file should be placed in the master branch.

Your CNAME file might look like the following:

teamtreehouse.com

Next you will need to update the DNS records for your domain name. This is usually done through a control panel provided by your domain registrar.

If you want to use a root domain (such as teamtreehouse.com) for your website you will need to setup a new A record that points to the IP address 204.232.175.78.

If you are using a subdomain (such as blog.teamtreehouse.com) it’s best to create a new CNAME record that points to your GitHub user subdomain (**username**.github.io). This is so that the DNS will be automatically adjusted if the servers IP address changes on GitHub.

Note: For information about the difference between CNAME and A records check out this video.

It may take a little while for your DNS changes to take effect. This is usually no more than a few hours. Once the changes have gone through, you should be able to access your new website from your custom domain name.

Final Thoughts

In this post I’ve showed you how to host pages that you’ve created yourself but it’s worth noting that GitHub also has a tool for automatically generating pages for your projects. You can launch this tool from the project settings page.

GitHub pages does limit you to using static assets (HTML, CSS and JS) for your websites, but you could use something like Jekyll to make it easier to generate these files.

It’s not going to meet everyone’s needs but if you just want to launch a simple website, GitHub pages is a quick and easy way to get started.

The post Using GitHub Pages To Host Your Website appeared first on Treehouse Blog.

Dr. Richard Forno, Director of UMBC's Graduate Cybersecurity Program and Assistant Director of the UMBC Center for Cybersecurity, appeared on WEAA (88.9FM) Baltimore's 'The Marc Steiner Show' as part of a long-form panel discussion on assorted cybersecurity issues.   He was joined by Edward Erickson of the Baltimore City Paper and Stephen Bono, CEO of Baltimore-based Independent Security Evaluators.

The show, Hacking: Implications For Our Privacy and Security, was aired on August 15, 2013.

“We turn to the topic of hacking. At recent hacking conventions in Las Vegas, cybersecurity experts revealed how easy it is to hack everything from cars to pacemakers. General Keith B. Alexander, Director of the National Security Agency, spoke at one of the conferences about his organization’s use of technology to spy on people.”

Today, we celebrate part 1 of the 2013 PROMISE Summer Success Institute with a Dissertation House, and a Postdoctoral & Alumni Writing Suite at the SMC Center at UMB! Postdocs and alumni may join us virtually by posting your goals here. Dissertation House (DH) participants will be meeting with Dr. Wendy Carter-Veale. Those participating in the “in-person” DH and those who are participating virtually can post their goals here: http://dissertationhouse.wordpress.com/blog-online-challenge/summer-2013-challenge/.  Let’s make it a productive day!

Today, we celebrate part 1 of the 2013 PROMISE Summer Success Institute with a Dissertation House, and a Postdoctoral & Alumni Writing Suite at the SMC Center at UMB! Postdocs and alumni may join us virtually by posting your goals here. Dissertation House (DH) participants will be meeting with Dr. Wendy Carter-Veale. Those participating in the “in-person” DH and those who are participating virtually can post their goals here: https://dissertationhouse.wordpress.com/blog-online-challenge/summer-2013-challenge/.  Let’s make it a productive day!

This free set of icons contains the logos of top online payment solutions and credit cards like PayPal, Google Wallet, Visa, and MasterCard. This icon set contains 12 icons and is perfect for use in e-commerce websites. We have also included the PSD file in case you want to make changes to the icons.

This free icon set is brought to you by Responsive, a design and development studio in Bucharest, Romania.

Preview

Here is a list of the icons in this set:

• PayPal icon
• Visa icon
• MasterCard icon
• Skrill icon
• eBay icon
• Discover icon
• Maestro icon
• Solo icon
• Cirrus icon
• 2Checkout icon
• Western Union icon
• Google Wallet icon

Download

• Free Online Payment Icons (ZIP, 5.98 MB)

Related Content

• 10 Excellent Online Payment Systems
• Tips for Creating an Excellent E-Commerce Website
• Free Icon Fonts for Web User Interfaces
• Related categories: Freebies and Resources

About the Author

Stefan Irava is the Lead Designer for Responsive, a Bucharest-based design and development studio. Stefan is also the Lead Designer for Revolge, an online drag-and-drop design tool for creating stunning WordPress themes. See more work from Stefan on Dribbble and find out more about Revolge here.

The post Free Online Payment Icon Set (PSD and PNG) appeared first on Six Revisions.

I’m sure you’ve heard of personas and scenarios, but let’s start with a quick explanation of how they are useful in the design process:

A persona is an elementary tool of usability and user experience design and describes a typical member of your target audience. Although a persona is a fictional representation of a user, it is based on real data; the persona should be as close to a real potential user as possible.

A scenario is a ‘story’ based on the persona’s experience of, journey with, and actions taken while interacting with your app or site. It explains the process a user might follow, their capabilities, reasons, goals, and motivations in relation to the site. Scenarios explain everyday situations; how the app or site fits in the persona’s daily life, what got them to use it, how they use it, why they keep on using it, and so on.

Together they describe the various contexts in which someone could be using your site. This, in turn, flushes out problems and opportunities that ought to be addressed.

What are they good for?

Both personas and scenarios are a way for designers and developers to keep in touch with their target audience, as they progress with a project. They keep us in check and make sure we are in fact creating for these users.

For instance, if you are creating a color picking app you will want to make sure that your personas have a desire and a reason to use such an app. Therefore, you might create a persona who is a designer, or someone who is redecorating their living room. It has to make sense; it has to be in context. This way you can use personas and scenarios to identify what you could be doing better to anticipate how a designer would use a color picking app, such as to pair up colors rather than as a random color generator.

As you can see, thinking this through allows you to focus on features and functions that your audience actually wants and cares about; it allows for the process to be built from the ground up, and the project will be much more efficient and effective if we focus on users from the very beginning of development to the end.

The benefits of personas and scenarios

Personas specifically allow us as designers to make predictions about how our users will respond to our design decisions, based on these mental models. They change the questions we are asking, from ‘what is the best solution for this problem’ to ‘what would be the best solution to suit Angie, the freelance designer’. These two simple and fundamental tools have a psychological effect, a reminder that the project is not at all about us but the people who will use it; and that, right there is the most powerful effect personas and scenarios can offer.

In more specific terms, personas provide a personality for a user you are creating your site or app for. It’s a motivating aspect for sure. You have a persona that describes Samantha, an easy going, tree hugging graphic design student who has high technology proficiency but is indecisive – which is why this color picking app is perfect for her. Scenarios communicate character and values of the user as they journey through a specific goal. In a scenario you could go over over how a friend recommended her this app and how she goes to explore it for the first time, what she found useful or confusing.

Additionally, having a face put to your target audience discourages big directional changes from stakeholders as they now have a particular person in mind, they now have a human connection attached to the project and can anticipate what dramatic effects these changes could have. This is all possible with a simple, fictional persona. It’s fascinating how much impact a simple doodle can have.

In addition, this is an extremely inexpensive approach, compared with the costs, in terms of time as well as money, involved in talking to real users every time you have a decision to make.

Storytelling in itself is a very powerful tool; it brings people together, it brings in entertainment and meaning. By using personas in scenarios you are allowing for a special bond between your team and your audience. It allows them to come alive when you cannot literally talk to them yourself. They help your team understand and figure out how your audience might tackle problems and issues which may arise. As a result, it helps you to think about solutions to problems from the perspective of the target audience.

I’ve mentioned briefly how personas ground us as designers. We may get so caught up in the project and in our own opinions that we need to be reminded that this is not about us; it is about the users. Having a bunch of personas hung on the wall is a great way to never forget about your users. As we get deep into a project, we may be too invested in our work to think clearly and objectively; this, in turn, could really harm the end product. You do not want to risk designing something that your target audience doesn’t appreciate.

Creating great personas and scenarios

I think a valid question at this point would be what it takes to create great personas and scenarios. First and foremost, your personas have to be based on actual user research so that you are not wasting your time and resources creating personas with no relation to your intended audience. If you have your data figured out, you will create your personas accurately and provide them with personalities, skills and motivations that are just right for you – they will guide you well.

The same goes for scenarios, if your personas foundation is solid, your scenarios will be too as you will be able to create accurate scenarios and therefore identify potential problems that these users might face. Additionally, another thing that makes for great personas and scenarios is regular application and reference within your project progression.

Conclusion

Personas and scenarios are a staple for user experience design. Not having them in your projects would significantly degrade its quality, as the whole purpose of user experience design is to ensure the best possible experience for the users. If you do not count them in while creating your product, the experience will not match your users’ expectations or capabilities and therefore suffer. On the other hand, using these tools has been proven to significantly improve a project in terms of user experience.

Do you use personas and scenarios to design sites? How do you make them realistic? Let us know in the comments.

Featured image/thumbnail, people image via Shutterstock.

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PROMISE: Maryland’s AGEP salutes GA Miguel Nino! Miguel graduated from UMBC with a master’s degree in Instructional Systems Development, and will be leaving us to pursue his PhD in Instructional Design and Technology at Virginia Tech.  Over the last two years, Miguel has continued to develop expertise in intercultural communication. He has also developed new skills to address issues in STEM Education, online training, evaluation and assessment, and recruitment and retention models.

Miguel is a multilingual professional who has recruited for PROMISE at the AGMUS Research Symposium in Puerto Rico, and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) in California.  He has streamlined evaluation and assessment for PROMISE and has contributed to the process improvement of the PROF-it, Professors-in-Training Program. Miguel developed the video resources for the PROMISE Success Seminars: http://www.youtube.com/user/PROMISEagep.

Miguel has been an excellent collaborator. He co-authored and co-presented a paper on “Preparation for STEM Graduate Programs” at the Latin and Caribbean Consortium of Engineering Institutions (LACCEI) in Panama, in July 2012.  The Spanish version of his 2012 LACCEI paper was utilized during the “How to Apply to Graduate School” workshop at the 2013 GEM conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and at the  ”Foro de Liderazgo Estudiantil en Ingenieria,” in Quintana Roo, México for LACCEI 2013. He also co-authored and co-presented a paper on “Peer Mentoring” at the 120th Annual Conference of the American Society of Engineering Education, in Atlanta, GA, June 2013.

Both papers can be found here:

Carter-Johnson, F. D., Ordóñez Rozo, P.,  Tull, R. G., and Nino, M.  (2013). Examining the Intersection of Graduate Student Funding, Mentoring,and Training as a Mechanism of Success for Peer Mentors and their Mentees, paper ID#7626. 120th Annual Conference of the American Association of Engineering Education, Atlanta: ASEE.

Tull, R. G., Nino, M.  and Ramoutar, N. (2012).  Preparing for Engineering and Other STEM Graduate/Post-Graduate Masters and Doctoral Programs.  Proceedings of the Tenth LACCEI Latin American and Caribbean Conference (LACCEI 2012), Megaprojects: Building Infrastructure by fostering engineering collaboration, efficient and effective integration and innovative planning, July 23-27, 2012, Panama City, Panama.  [Spanish Version of Section 4 here: Preparación para Programas de Maestría y Doctorado].

Miguel has been a great asset to PROMISE! He made his mark during his first assignment at the 2011 PROMISE Summer Success Institute (SSI) working with other PROMISE staff members, Gloria Anglon (now at Harvard), Dr. Laura “Violeta” Colombo (now teaching in Argentina), and Natasha Ramoutar (fellow GA). He later became the “Senior” Program Assistant on the PROMISE Team, co-leading the 2012 SSI, and taking a leading role in the implementation of the 2013 PROMISE SSI: 10th Anniversary Celebration.

We will miss Miguel tremendously and we wish him the best as he pursues his doctorate, and continues to develop his skills as a global, technical professional!