Create Your Own Repair Café Website

Would you like to create a website for your own Repair Café? Good news — you can clone our site and have your own up and running in under an hour, completely free.

We’ve put in the hard work so you don’t have to. This is an off-the-shelf solution: a complete, ready-to-go website with all the pages, forms, and documentation a Repair Café needs. Just add your own details and you’re ready to launch.

This guide walks you through the process step by step. No coding experience is required, though you’ll need to be comfortable editing text files and following instructions carefully.

What You’ll Get

Our website template includes:

• A responsive, mobile-friendly design
• Blog functionality for news and updates
• Pages for café times, volunteer information, registration, and donations
• A contact form integration
• Privacy policy template
• Easy customisation of colours and branding

Downloadable Resources

Starting a Repair Café involves a lot of paperwork — registration forms, liability disclaimers, risk assessments, and more. We’ve already created all of this, so you don’t have to start from scratch. Just download, adapt with your details, and you’re ready to go:

• Registration forms — Both online and printable PDF versions
• Disclaimer / House Rules — Sets expectations for customers
• Risk Assessment — Required for public liability insurance
• Record of Repair — For repairers to document each fix
• Feedback Form — Collect useful information about the repair experience
• Operational Checklist — Regular tasks and when to do them
• Table Numbers & Allocation Queue — Keep things organised on the day
• Flyer Template — Promotional material to get the word out

You’ll find all of these on our Downloads page. Feel free to use them as starting points for your own documentation.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, you’ll need:

1. A GitHub account — Sign up free at github.com
2. A text editor — We recommend Vim for the adventurous, or TextEdit (Mac) / Notepad (Windows) for simplicity
3. Git installed on your computer — Download from git-scm.com (optional, but helpful for local preview)

Step 1: Fork the Repository

A “fork” creates your own copy of our website that you can modify freely.

1. Visit our GitHub repository: github.com/OolonColoophid/OolonColoophid.github.io
2. Click the Fork button in the top-right corner
3. GitHub will create a copy under your account

Important: Rename your forked repository to yourusername.github.io (replacing yourusername with your actual GitHub username). This enables GitHub Pages hosting.

To rename:

1. Go to your forked repository
2. Click Settings
3. Under “Repository name”, change it to yourusername.github.io
4. Click Rename

Step 2: Enable GitHub Pages

1. In your repository, go to Settings → Pages
2. Under “Source”, select Deploy from a branch
3. Choose the main branch and / (root) folder
4. Click Save

Your site will be live at https://yourusername.github.io within a few minutes.

Step 3: Customise Your Site

Essential Configuration (_config.yml)

Edit the _config.yml file to update your site’s core settings:

title: Your Repair Café Name
author: Your Name
email: contact@yourrepaircafe.org
description: >-
  Your café's tagline or description

url: "https://yourusername.github.io"

Also update the menu section to reflect your pages, and change theme_color to match your branding.

Update Content Files

Each page is a Markdown file (.markdown or .md) in the root directory:

Edit each file to replace our content with yours. The files use Markdown syntax, which is straightforward to learn.

Replace Images

Upload your own images to the assets folder:

• sidebar-lordsMeadow.jpeg — The sidebar background image
• Images in assets/favicon/ — Your favicon and app icons
• Photo folders — Replace with your own repair photos

Update the CNAME (Optional)

If you’re using a custom domain, edit the CNAME file to contain your domain name. Otherwise, delete this file.

Step 4: Preview Locally (Optional but Recommended)

To preview changes before pushing them live:

Install Jekyll

# On macOS
brew install ruby
gem install bundler jekyll

# On Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt-get install ruby-full build-essential
gem install bundler jekyll

Run the Local Server

cd your-repo-folder
bundle install
bundle exec jekyll serve

Visit http://localhost:4000 to see your site.

Step 5: Write Blog Posts

Blog posts live in the _posts folder. Create new posts with this filename format:

YYYY-MM-DD-your-post-title.markdown

Each post needs “front matter” at the top:

---
layout: post
title: "Your Post Title"
date: 2026-02-08 12:00:00 +0000
categories: news
---

Your post content here...

Step 6: Set Up a Custom Domain (Optional)

Want to use your own domain like www.yourrepaircafe.org?

1. Purchase a domain from a registrar (e.g., Namecheap, Google Domains)
2. In your repository, edit the CNAME file to contain your domain
3. Configure DNS with your registrar:
   • Add a CNAME record pointing www to yourusername.github.io
   • For apex domain (no www), add A records pointing to GitHub’s IPs:
     • 185.199.108.153
     • 185.199.109.153
     • 185.199.110.153
     • 185.199.111.153
4. In GitHub repository settings → Pages, enter your custom domain and enable “Enforce HTTPS”

Keeping Your Site Updated

To pull in improvements we make to the original template:

git remote add upstream https://github.com/OolonColoophid/OolonColoophid.github.io.git
git fetch upstream
git merge upstream/main

Resolve any conflicts (where your changes overlap with ours), then push.

Getting Help

• Jekyll Documentation: jekyllrb.com/docs/
• GitHub Pages Help: docs.github.com/pages
• Markdown Guide: markdownguide.org

If you create a Repair Café website using our template, we’d love to hear about it! Drop us an email at contact@tregonyrepaircafe.org.

Licence

Our website template is available under the MIT licence, meaning you’re free to use, modify, and distribute it for your own Repair Café. We only ask that you remove our specific content and branding before going live.

Happy repairing — and happy website building!