README

This is the repo for the OBIS website, https://obis.org/. It is based on Jekyll.

Reporting Issues and Suggesting Improvements

If you find a bug or have a suggestion, you can submit an issue using the Issues tab at the top of this page.

1. Click New issue.
2. Give your issue a short, descriptive title.
3. In the description, include as much detail as possible — what you expected to happen, what actually happened, and steps to reproduce the problem.
4. Click Submit new issue.

You'll need a free GitHub account to submit an issue. If you don't have one, you can create one at https://github.com/signup.

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Development & Deployment

This repository has two deployment targets:

• dev branch → https://dev.obis.org (staging)

• main branch → https://obis.org (production)

• PRs are required to merge into master — no one can push directly without a review

• Only @pieterprovoost can force push — everyone else is blocked from overriding history

Dev Workflow

1. Create a feature branch from dev and make your changes.
2. Open a pull request into dev. Once merged, the site will automatically deploy to https://dev.obis.org — you can monitor progress under the Actions tab (Deploy to server (DEV)).
3. Review your changes on the dev site.
4. When ready for production, open a pull request from dev into master. Once merged, the production site will update automatically (Deploy to server (PROD)).

Add a page

Most content on this site lives in one of two places:

• Collection pages — add a new Markdown file to the relevant _collection folder (see Collections below). _posts and _usecases use the filename format YYYY-MM-DD-your-title.md. All other collections use plain descriptive slugs (e.g. obis_export.md). Refer to an existing file in the same collection for the expected format.
• Standalone pages — add a Markdown file to the appropriate top-level folder (e.g. data/, about/, whatwedo/) or to the root of the repo.

All pages should include a YAML front matter block at the top. The available fields can be understood by looking at existing pages.

Add a News Post:

All posts (OBIS News items) should include the following YAML front matter block at the top:

• layout: Should always be post
• title: An excellent title, in quotes.
• subtitle: An excellent subtitle, in quotes.
• lang: Usually en for English, but could be other value.
• author: Should always be 'OBIS'
• tags: consult Laurent.
• purpose: Should always be 'news'
• feed: Should always be 'true'
• image: A link to image on internet or to image in assets/images
• imageCaption: Text in quotes. A description of the image. Include link to WoRMS record if you reference a taxon.
• imageAlt: Text in quotes. Should clearly describe the image and might need more detail than the caption.
• imageLicense: Text in quotes. A description of the license under which the image is being used. Use links to give credit and make it easy for users to find the license.

Example frontmatter block

---
layout: post
title: "The new OBIS website is live!"
subtitle: "Please be our cleaner shrimp."
lang: en
author: OBIS
tags:
purpose: news
feed: true
image: https://inaturalist-open-data.s3.amazonaws.com/photos/398634387/large.jpg
imageCaption: "A [Pacific cleaner shrimp (_Lysmata amboinensis_)](https://marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=241289) cleans the mouth of a fish on the coast of Umkhanyakude, South Africa"
imageAlt: "A Pacific cleaner shrimp (Lysmata amboinensis) cleans the mouth of a fish on the coast of Umkhanyakude, South Africa"
imageLicense: "Ambon Cleaner Shrimp (_Lysmata amboinensis_) Umkhanyakude, ZA-NL, ZA. by aspearton via [inaturalist.org](https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/398634387), licensed under [CC-BY-NC](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)"

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Your post text starts here. You can use any valid Markdown to style it...

Collections

Jekyll collections group related content so it can be iterated over and rendered with shared layouts and templates. This website currently has the following collections:

• _posts — news and blog posts (built-in Jekyll collection)
• _usecases — scientific use cases featuring OBIS data
• _partnerships — institutional partnerships
• _data_products — data products derived from OBIS
• _sources — external data sources integrated with OBIS