Xanthan is a collection of ready-to-use website starter kits designed specifically for historians, educators, and researchers who want to publish their work online without needing to be a web developer.
Think of Xanthan as a set of pre-built foundations for different kinds of websites. Instead of starting from scratch or wrestling with complicated web software, you pick the starter kit that matches what you want to build—like a personal portfolio, a class project, or a digital story—and then customize it with your own content and design preferences.
What makes Xanthan different:
You don’t need to know how to code to use Xanthan. If you can edit a text document and follow step-by-step instructions, you can build and maintain your own website.
The honest answer: Wix and Squarespace are easier to start with. They have drag-and-drop interfaces, instant previews, and polished templates you can customize in minutes. If you need a quick website and don’t care about learning how it works, they’re good options.
So why choose Xanthan instead? Because Xanthan prioritizes different values:
Ownership. With Wix or Squarespace, your content lives on their servers in their proprietary format. If you want to leave, you can’t take your site with you—you have to rebuild from scratch. With Xanthan, you own the files. Your entire site is text files in a repository you control. Want to move to a different host? Export and deploy anywhere in minutes.
No subscription fees. Xanthan sites are free to host on GitHub Pages forever. Wix and Squarespace require ongoing payments ($16-$40/month) to remove ads, use a custom domain, or access collaboration features. Over a few years, that’s hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Learning real skills. Wix teaches you how to use Wix. Xanthan teaches you Markdown, HTML, CSS, Git, and web fundamentals—skills that transfer to any digital project you’ll ever work on. You build digital literacy while building your site.
Collaboration without paywalls. Multi-user collaboration on commercial platforms requires expensive team plans. GitHub’s collaboration tools are free and industry-standard. Students, colleagues, and contributors can work together on your site without subscription barriers.
Stability and longevity. Commercial platforms can change pricing, shut down features, or disappear entirely (remember GeoCities? Google Sites Classic?). Xanthan is built on HTML, CSS, and Markdown—technologies that have worked for decades and will keep working for decades more.
The tradeoff: Xanthan has a learning curve. You’ll spend 10-15 minutes deploying your first site, then an hour or two learning how to customize it. That investment pays off with complete control, zero ongoing costs, and skills you’ll use for years.
Who should use Wix/Squarespace instead:
Who should use Xanthan:
The honest answer: Not yet—but for many projects, yes.
What Xanthan’s ScrollStories can do now:
For narrative-driven stories without complex data visualization, Xanthan gives you everything you need. Check out our ScrollStory examples to see what’s possible.
What ESRI StoryMaps does better (for now):
Why choose Xanthan anyway?
Even with fewer features, Xanthan offers significant advantages:
You own it. Your story lives in a repository you control, not locked in ESRI’s platform. Export it anytime, host it anywhere, keep it forever—even if ESRI changes policies or pricing.
It’s free. ESRI StoryMaps requires an ArcGIS subscription (often institutional). GitHub Pages hosting is free with no limits. Your story stays online without ongoing fees.
Open and collaborative. Anyone can fork your repository, suggest improvements, or build on your work. StoryMaps are individual and proprietary. Xanthan stories can be true collaborative scholarship.
Built to last. Your ScrollStory is HTML and CSS files. They’ll work in browsers 20 years from now without maintenance. StoryMaps depend on ESRI’s servers and software continuing to exist.
Community-driven development. This is where the parallel to QGIS vs ArcGIS matters. QGIS started with fewer features than ArcGIS but has grown through community contributions into a powerful, professional alternative. Xanthan’s ScrollStories are following the same path. As the community contributes components—new map integrations, chart libraries, interactive elements—the gap will close. And because it’s open source, improvements benefit everyone.
The learning curve question:
“But StoryMaps is easier!” Yes, the interface is easier. But creating a good StoryMap still requires learning: how to structure a narrative, which map layers to use, how to pace revelations. You’re learning a tool and a form.
With Xanthan, you’re also learning the underlying web technologies. It takes longer initially, but you gain skills that work everywhere, not just in one platform.
Bottom line:
And if you build something you wish Xanthan could do better? Contribute it back. That’s how the gap closes.
Many people wonder if they need a personal website in an age of social media, academic platforms, and portfolio services. Here’s why having your own site matters:
Own your content and your presence. Platforms like Academia.edu, Medium, or LinkedIn can change their rules, shut down, or lock you out. Your own website gives you complete control over your work and how it’s presented.
Create a professional hub. Instead of scattering your work across multiple platforms, a personal site becomes the central, authoritative source for your projects, writing, CV, and contact information.
Showcase work your way. Present your projects exactly how you envision them, not constrained by platform templates or character limits. Tell your story the way you want it told.
Learn valuable skills. Building and maintaining your own site teaches you how the web actually works—skills that are increasingly valuable in any field.
Ready to build? Check out the Getting Started guide.
People often argue that learning web tools is futile because technology changes so fast. But static site tools like Xanthan actually represent the opposite trend—they embrace stability, simplicity, and longevity in web development.
They rely on enduring web fundamentals. Static sites are built with plain HTML, CSS, and sometimes minimal JavaScript—technologies that have been stable for decades. Unlike many web frameworks that rise and fall in popularity, these core technologies don’t go away. Learning them gives you skills that will still matter far in the future.
They resist unnecessary complexity. Modern web development often piles on layers of abstraction (frameworks, dependencies, servers) to function at all. Static sites intentionally strip that away. You don’t need an interface to edit your site; you edit simple plaintext files that you can open anywhere. This simplicity is a form of technological resilience.
They model sustainable design principles. By focusing on lightweight, portable content that can last indefinitely, static sites embody the ideals of digital preservation. They don’t depend on a proprietary platform or a server that might vanish.
They teach timeless design thinking. Learning to use a static site template is also learning how to structure information clearly, design for readability, and separate content from presentation—all principles that extend far beyond any one technology stack.
None! You will need to learn Markdown, and you’ll probably want to learn a little about how HTML and CSS work together to “style” a website. It’s not really “coding” per se, but there is some syntax to learn that enables you to design your site however you’d like.
It take 10-15 minutes to read through and follow the directions for creating a new site from one of the Xanthan templates. At that point, you’ll have your own functioning website that you can start to customize to fit your needs.
As with doing anything for the first time, there is a startup cost with learning a new workflow. After you get your site working, it takes about an hour to really make your site look different from the sample template because you will be learning where files are, where to make changes in the files, and deciding how to organize information on your pages and site. But it’s fast and easy after you get familiar with how things work. This is the investment that building your own site requires, but it pays great dividends later on.
Xanthan is intentionally open source to leverage the collective knowledge and skills of digital public history practitioners. Rather than keeping expertise siloed within institutions or commercial platforms, open source development allows historians, educators, and developers to collaborate, share solutions, and collectively expand our capabilities.
This collaborative approach means that improvements made by one person benefit everyone. When someone solves a layout problem, adds a new feature, or clarifies documentation, that knowledge becomes available to the entire community. It’s a model that aligns with the values of public history itself: making knowledge accessible, building shared resources, and working together to tell better stories.
By contributing to Xanthan, you’re not just improving a tool—you’re participating in a community effort to make web publishing more accessible and sustainable for scholars and public historians.
Absolutely! GitHub provides an issue tracker that makes it easy to report bugs, request features, or ask questions about Xanthan.
To submit an issue:
What makes a good issue:
Don’t worry about being too detailed—the more information you provide, the easier it is for us to help. And check existing issues first; someone might have already reported the same thing!
We’d love your help making Xanthan better! There are several ways to contribute:
Report bugs or suggest features. If you encounter issues or have ideas for improvements, open an issue on the Xanthan GitHub repository. Clear descriptions and examples help us understand and address your feedback.
Improve documentation. Notice something unclear in the guides? Found a typo? Documentation improvements are incredibly valuable. You can suggest edits or submit pull requests to help others learn more easily.
Share your examples. Built something cool with Xanthan? Share your site! Real-world examples help others see what’s possible and inspire new use cases.
Contribute code. If you’re comfortable with Jekyll, CSS, or JavaScript, we welcome pull requests that fix bugs, add features, or improve performance. Check the issues page for good first contributions.
Spread the word. Tell colleagues, students, or friends who might benefit from building their own site. The more people using Xanthan, the better it becomes.
Start by visiting the Xanthan repository to see current issues and contribution guidelines.