blogdown quick tutorial

Outline

  • How websites work?
  • Git/github
  • markdown/Rmarkdown
  • blogdown

How websites work?

A simple scenario

  1. Web browser send requests (e.g. https://bookdown.org/yihui/blogdown/).
  2. DNS server finds the IP address of the webhosting server based on the domain name (e.g. https://bookdown.org).
  3. Webhosting server sends back HTML codes and files (image, video, etc.) to the web browser (e.g. all files under 'yihui/blogdown' folder in the server).
  4. Web browser shows you the website.

Markdown/R Markdown

Markdown

Markdown is an easy-to-read and easy-to-write plain text format. Cheatsheet.

R Markdown

Cheatsheet  

Git/github

Introduction

Git is a free and open source distributed version control system, a tool to manage your source code history.

GitHub is a web-based hosting service for version control using git.

Git workflow

$ git config --global user.name "John Doe"
$ git config --global user.email johndoe@example.com

Git configuration

Adding a new SSH key to your GitHub account: https://help.github.com/articles/adding-a-new-ssh-key-to-your-github-account/

Set up your name and email address (first time only):

  • git init
  • git status
  • git add
  • git commit
  • git push
  • git clone
  • git pull
  • git checkout

Most commonly used git command

Resources

  • git - the simple guide: http://rogerdudler.github.io/git-guide/
  • github guides: https://guides.github.com/activities/hello-world/
  • Introduction to git - Core concepts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR6G2v_WsRA
  • git workflow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3a2x1iJFJWc

blogdown

Installation

install.packages("blogdown")
blogdown::install_hugo()

  • For macOS users, if you see error message "Error: You have not agreed to the Xcode license.", try to run the following code in terminal.
     

  • For macOS users, if you have 'Homebrew' installed, install_hugo() will use it to install hugo. It might take a few minutes.

sudo xcodebuild -license

Installation

  • For macOS users, if you don't have 'Homebrew' installed, install_hugo() will download the Hugo binary directly. You might see some error and warning messages, but no worries.

New blogdown project
using Rstudio

In Rstudio, File -> New project... -> New directory -> Website using blogdown.

Hugo themes: https://themes.gohugo.io/; rbind

We use hugo theme "gcushen/hugo-academic" in this demo.

New blogdown project
using command line

Use the following R code to create a new site if you are not using Rstudio.

blogdown::new_site(dir = "./blogdown_test", install_hugo = TRUE, format = "toml", 
         sample = TRUE, theme = "gcushen/hugo-academic", theme_example = TRUE, 
         serve = interactive())

Launch the website locally

In Rstudio, Addins -> Serve Site

Or in R terminal, run 'blogdown::serve_site()'.

The file structure

  1. config.toml: the configuration file controls global settings for your site. (TOML: Tom's Obvious, Minimal Language) build-in options
  2. content: contains the R Markdown or Markdown files for your posts and pages.
  3. public: the publishing directory. It is generated by blogdown and no need to manually add files to this folder.
  4. static: store static web assets like images, CSS, and JavaScript files.

Customize your website

  1. Edit the options in 'config.toml'.
  2. Create new posts,
    1. Copy a template and modify.
    2. In Rstudio, Addins -> New Post.
    3. ?blogdown::new_post.

 Although you can choose to create a new post in Markdown format or R Markdown format, highly recommend you to always use R Markdown, even if your document does not contain any R code chunks.

Publish your website
without using git

  1. Restart the R session, and run blogdown::hugo_build(). You should get a 'public' directory under the root directory of your project.

  2. Log into https://www.netlify.com, drag and drop the 'public' folder to the indicated area on the Netlify web page.

  • You need to manually upload the 'public' folder to netlify.com every time you update your website.
  • This approach is good for those websites that are not updated frequently.

Publish your website
using git

  1. Put all source code of your website into a GIT repository. (no need to include the 'public' directory)
  2. Host your GIT repository on GitHub, GitLab, or BitBucket.
  3. In Netlify, click 'New site from Git' and follow the instructions.

Domain customization

  1. Buy domain names from  domain name registrars.
  2. Follow the instruction of Custom Domains from netlify.

Other deployment methods: https://bookdown.org/yihui/blogdown/deployment.html

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