Chandni Chowk, Delhi, 2017

How to Update the Site

Workflow

The site is hosted on Netlify. Netlify serves pre-built files directly — it does not run quarto render itself. That means you must render locally and commit the output before pushing.

Every time you make a change:

# from the repo root (website-2021/)
quarto render quarto-site
git add -A
git commit -m "describe your change"
git push origin master

Netlify picks up the push automatically and deploys within seconds.

Why commit _site/? The _site/ folder contains the built HTML/CSS/JS that Netlify serves. It used to be gitignored, but is now tracked so Netlify doesn’t need a build step. Always re-render before committing so _site/ stays in sync with your source files.

Add a paper

Edit papers.yml. Copy an existing entry and fill in the fields. The required fields are title, year, and venue. Everything else is optional.

- title: "My New Paper Title"
  year: 2026
  venue: "American Political Science Review"
  status: published      # published | rr | ur | wp
  authors:               # omit entirely if sole-authored
    - Co-Author Name
    - Aidan Milliff
  abstract: "..."
  homepage_featured: true   # show on homepage?
  homepage_order: 1         # lower = higher on homepage list
  links:
    - label: PDF
      url: "https://..."

Add a blog post

Create a new file in blog/ named my-post-slug.qmd. It needs this frontmatter:

---
title: "My Post Title"
date: "2026-05-15"
description: "One sentence shown in the listing."
body-classes: blog-post
---

Post content here in normal markdown.

The post appears automatically in the Other Writing listing — no other files to touch.

To add a header image, drop an image file in blog/ and add this below the frontmatter:

![Caption text](my-image.png){.blog-featured-img}

Add an external writing piece (op-ed, podcast, etc.)

Edit external-writing.yml. Add an entry at the top (they display in order):

- title: "My Op-Ed Title"
  venue: "Lawfare"
  date: "May 2026"
  url: "https://..."
  coauthors: "Co-Author Name"   # omit if solo

Add a news item

Edit news.yml. Add an entry at the top (they display in order):

- date: "May 2026"
  text: 'New paper published in <em>APSR</em>.'
  url: "https://..."   # optional — makes the whole text a link

Basic HTML is fine in text (e.g. <em> for italics).

Add a teaching entry

Edit teaching.yml. Find the right institution block and add a course:

- code: "POS 1234"
  name: "Course Name"
  level: "Undergrad"       # PhD / Undergrad / TA / Grader / Co-Instructor
  terms:
    - label: "Fall 2026"
      url: "https://..."   # optional syllabus link
    - label: "Fall 2027"   # no url = plain text

To link the course name itself (instead of individual terms), use name_url instead of term-level URLs.

Update the CV

Replace media/CV.pdf with the new file. Keep the filename identical.

File map

File	What it controls
`papers.yml`	All publications (research page + homepage featured)
`news.yml`	Homepage news column
`external-writing.yml`	Other Writing page, right column
`teaching.yml`	Teaching page course list
`blog/*.qmd`	Individual blog posts
`media/CV.pdf`	CV download
`coauthors.yml`	Co-author names → profile links (used by research page)
`bio.qmd`	Bio page content
`advising.qmd`	“For Students” page content
`_quarto.yml`	Site config, nav — don’t touch unless you know what you’re doing
`custom.scss`	All visual styles — don’t touch unless you know what you’re doing