Migrating with Claude

I've been meaning to update my personal website infrastructure for a while. The site was running on Pelican 3.7.1, which was getting long in the tooth. This December, I finally migrated to Pelican 4.11 using Claude Code, Anthropic's agentic AI coding tool.

Migration Overview

This repository is a fresh migration of the original TheoryAndPractice repository. The migration involved several key changes:

  • Pelican version: 3.7.1 → 4.11.0
  • Environment management: Now uses pixi for reproducible environments
  • Plugin system: Migrated to Pelican 4's namespace plugin architecture where possible
  • Deployment: GitHub Actions workflow deploys to cranmer/cranmer.github.io

What Was Preserved

  • All existing content and URL structure
  • pelican-bootstrap3 theme with Bootswatch 'flatly' styling
  • Custom per-page JavaScript and CSS functionality
  • Jupyter notebook embedding via liquid tags
  • BibTeX bibliography support

Key Changes

Added

  • Fresh repository migrated from Pelican 3.7 to Pelican 4.11
  • pixi environment management for reproducible builds
  • GitHub Actions deployment workflow to cranmer.github.io
  • New CV page (/pages/cv.html) with bio, experience, education, awards, and professional highlights
  • New Selected Publications page (/selected-publications.html) with thematic categories
    • Replaces old Publications page (/publications.html) generated from by pelican-bibtex
    • Custom pelican-selected-publications plugin for YAML-driven publication organization
    • Filter by category, year, and highlighted papers
    • Publication metrics section displaying total papers, citations, and h-index
    • Profile icons linking to Google Scholar, INSPIRE, arXiv, OpenAlex, and ORCiD
    • Collapsible Altmetric badges for each publication with global toggle
    • Official arXiv logomark icon
  • New Talks page (/presentations.html) displaying 113 talks with video icons, compatible with IRIS-HEP format
    • Custom pelican-presentations plugin for parsing YAML presentation data
  • New Projects page (/projects.html) with card-based layout organized by category
    • Custom pelican-projects plugin for YAML-driven project organization
    • Card and list view toggle
    • Category and status filtering (All/Active/Completed)
    • Draft mode with separate preview page (/projects-draft.html) for unpublished projects
    • Auto-fetch images from GitHub repos when not specified
    • SVG images automatically get white backgrounds
  • New Media & Outreach page (/media.html) with embedded videos, podcasts, and articles
    • Custom pelican-media plugin for YAML-driven media organization
    • Card and list view toggle
    • Category filtering (Videos, Podcasts, Articles, Interviews, Outreach)
    • Year filtering
    • Embedded YouTube and Vimeo video players
    • Helper script to search Google News for new media mentions
  • Pagefind search with instant client-side search across all pages
  • Bluesky social link with custom butterfly icon
  • Custom SVG icons for Google Scholar, ORCiD, INSPIRE-HEP, arXiv, and OpenAlex (Font Awesome 4.x lacks these)
  • Custom navbar hover color (#EE9F43 orange)
  • Open Graph and Twitter Card support for social media preview cards
  • BibTeX modal popups with copy-to-clipboard functionality
  • Markdown rendering inside HTML blocks (md_in_html extension)

Fixed

  • Markdown links not rendering inside HTML <div> blocks
  • Floating images appearing in blog index summaries
  • BibTeX popup windows blocked by modern browsers (replaced with Bootstrap modals)

Plugin Modifications and Additions

The migration required modifications to several plugins:

  • pelican-cite: Added Bootstrap modal for viewing BibTeX entries with copy-to-clipboard functionality.

  • pelican-bibtex: Added Bootstrap modal replacing the old window.open popups that modern browsers block.

  • pelican_javascript: Migrated to Pelican 4 signal API while maintaining support for per-page custom CSS and JavaScript.

  • pelican-presentations: A new plugin created during this migration to generate a presentations page from YAML data. It's compatible with the IRIS-HEP presentations format, groups talks by year, and displays video icons for presentations with recordings.

  • pelican-selected-publications: Another new plugin that generates a curated publications page organized by research themes. Publications are defined in a YAML file that references BibTeX keys, allowing thematic grouping with category descriptions. Features include filtering by category/year/highlights, publication metrics display, profile icons, and collapsible Altmetric badges.

  • pelican-projects: A new plugin that generates a projects page with card-based layout. Projects are organized by category (software, research, collaborations, etc.) with card and list view options, status filtering, and draft mode support. Automatically fetches social preview images from GitHub repos and handles SVG images with white backgrounds.

  • pelican-media: A new plugin that generates a media & outreach page from YAML data. Supports embedded YouTube/Vimeo videos, images, and audio. Features card and list view toggle, category and year filtering, and featured item highlighting. Includes a helper script (search_media.py) that searches Google News RSS for new media mentions and outputs YAML suggestions.

Working with Claude Code

This entire migration was done in collaboration with Claude Code. The AI agent was able to:

  • Understand the existing Pelican 3.7 configuration and plugin structure
  • Set up the new pixi environment and Pelican 4.11 configuration
  • Migrate and modify plugins to work with the new Pelican version
  • Create a new pelican-presentations plugin from scratch, compatible with IRIS-HEP's format
  • Create a new pelican-selected-publications plugin for thematic publication organization with Altmetric integration
  • Create a new pelican-projects plugin for card-based project display with draft mode support
  • Create a new pelican-media plugin for media & outreach with embedded videos and a helper script to search for new mentions
  • Build a comprehensive CV page from PDF content
  • Debug issues with template rendering and markdown processing
  • Create the GitHub Actions deployment workflow
  • Add new features like the BibTeX modals, presentations page, Pagefind search, custom social icons, publication metrics, and social media preview cards
  • Implement custom CSS icons for services not supported by Font Awesome 4.x (arXiv, OpenAlex, Google Scholar, ORCiD, INSPIRE)

It was a genuinely collaborative process—I would describe what I wanted, Claude would implement it, and we'd iterate on the details together.

Documentation

For full details on the setup and all changes made, see:

  • README.md - Complete documentation on setup, deployment, and configuration
  • CHANGELOG.md - Detailed list of all changes made during migration