Websites

Overview

Creating a website sounds hard, but in the case of package websites it’s actually pretty easy. The pkgdown package automates most of the process. It will read your help files and all of your vignettes, and make a dynamic site based on those files.

There are still a few bits of content we need to fill in though, the largest of them being your ReadME. We’re going to work on creating that today. Your ReadME file will act as the homepage to your website.

Making your ReadME

A ReadME file isn’t anything special, just a regular markdown file. The purpose of any ReadME is to be the fist thing anyone reads regarding your package, so they know what it does, how to install it, and where to learn more.

To make your own ReadME, go to the File menu in R Studio, then Text File (not R Markdown!). Save this text file as README.md. The name and file type has to be exact for the rest of this process to work.

Open up the README.md in R Studio. You can edit this file like a Rmarkdown/Quarto file, however, a plan markdown file can contain no code. Text and pictures only!

Describe the following in your ReadME:

  1. What is problem does your package solve?
  2. What dependencies does your package have?
  3. Write a very simple workflow (ala use function a, then b, then c)
  4. Who are the authors? Write little bios for your team!

You can include other things if you would like as well.

You do not need to render/knit a plain markdown document.

Making it a Website

NOTE: You can only build your website if your check() is working. Make sure that is good first!

Once you have your ReadME done, you can try to create a website. We won’t be putting it online now, but you can see what it would look like by running the following code.

  • usethis::use_pkgdown()
  • pkgdown::build_site()

It will direct you to a local version of your website. Navigate around! You can read into the pkgdown package if you want to learn more about styling your website.