Setting Up Events

v 2020.12.09

Github Repository

Not a github admin? Quick jump to Configuring the Event

For OWASP Foundation Global or similar events, the repository should be created by someone with Github Administrator privileges following the standard event repository naming convention: www-event-YYYY-EVENTNAME, where YYYY is the 4 digit year and EVENTNAME is the name of the event. For instance, an event named Yolo which is in 2021 would have a repository named www-event-2021-yolo. In the case where multiple events of the same name occur in the same year, the pattern for the repository name should be www-event-YYYY-MM-EVENTNAME, where MM is the 2 digit month of the event. In addition, the repository should be created from the www-event-example template (see steps below). The following is a general guideline for event repository creation:

1. On the main OWASP Github Page, Click New
2. On the next page, click the Repository template dropdown and select OWASP/www-event-example
3. Type in a Respository name following the aforementioned conventions, choose the Public option, and click Create repository

The repository will be created after a minute or two. At this stage, the repository is not yet accessible as a website (this is covered in Publish the Event, below)

Configuring the Event

In order to configure the event, it is necessary to be familiar with the general layout of the event site. Note the sections on the following image:

The event site will be populated with certain files and folders. We will cover the more commonly edited files when setting up an event site. First, however, note that the repository has the following layout:

The following files and folders are commonly used for events. This is by no means a comprehensive list and events may have more or less in their respositories.

Header

Note that the header section, above, contains the menu, the Join Us button, the event title, where it is located, the dates, and the background image. Nearly everything in this section can be modified by modifying the event-details.yml file which is located in the _data folder in the repository:

Within the event-details.yml file, you will find the following sections:

The menu.yml file controls the navigation options in the header. That file has the following structure:

Body

The body section contains the venue and pitch from the event-details.yml file mentioned above. It may also contain other text as added to the index.md file in the root folder of the repository. In addition, the body section displays the pricing as determined by the pricing.yml file which is located in the _data folder.

The pricing.yml file is a data file that contains pricing details for each ‘ticket’ type sold. To understand the pricing file structure, see the following image and explanation of the data:

This image is produced by the following data in the pricing.yml file:

- title: Full Conference
  price: TBD
  info: '*See pricing*'
  items: 
    - title: Early Bird
      price: TBD
      info: '*Contact Bob*'
- title: Member Conference
  price: TBD
  items:
    - title: Member Early Bird
      price: TBD
      info:

The body section also contains the Keynote Speakers section which was not in the above picture (the event shown has no keynote speakers). The keynote speakers sections looke like the following:

This section is controlled by the keynotespeakers.yml file located in the _data folder. The keynotespeakers.yml file expects the following fields for each speaker:

Footer

Everything in the footer section comes from the sponsors.yml file in the _data folder. A typical sponsors.yml file contains the following fields:

Publishing the Event

Once the site has basic information and is set up to your satisfaction, it is time to make the site available over HTTPS. In order to do that, you must go to the repository in GitHub and select the Settings tab.

On the settings page, scroll down to the GitHub Pages section and change Source from None to Branch: master and leave the folder as / (root) then click Save.

At this point, your site is available as a page under the owasp.org site but the links will not work. To get the links to work, you need to set up the Custom domain below where we just set up the GitHub Pages Source. In addition, you will need to have already had configured a domain to point this repository at (DNS setup is outside this scope, please ask your I.T. admin to set this up).

Under Custom domain type in your domain for this event WITHOUT the leading https://. For instance, if your event website was meant to be https://mybigvent.owasp.org, you would type in mybigevent.owasp.org and then click Save. You can now test your site and verify your configuration by going to the website