everyone sets up a blog

[ataustin]

I'd like to start blogging or create a place to host my (still non-existent) portfolio. I think it would be fun for those of us who have no such online presence to help each other launch a blog via blogdown. Our first posts could perhaps be about our experience at the collab.

Inspired by @emilyriederer's issue #23, and also by @dgrtwo's clarion call to write publicly (rumor has it he'll even retweet your first blog post for some exposure).

[eddelbuettel]

Well I may be old school but when I think about these things / teach these things I typically start the other way:

• write one document in md and convert to html
• render it somewhere, easiest IMHO to just use github pages
• look into how css can mod appearance without document changes
• maybe upload a mod'ed css
• look into a 'static web engine' like hugo to automate this
• use hugo to drive the process, check out hugo templates etc pp
• only then maybe get to blogdown driving hugo
• only then consider issues like deployment (and 'github pages' may be easiest)
• only then consider automation

Up until the last step none of this requires an R package (and has no R relationship per se). I think users generally benefit from a broader view. But I may be wrong, or an outlier, or both :)

[willdebras]

Happy to help walk people through hugo deployment, setting up CI, and things like that.

[tomasokal]

I have built a few websites using blogdown/hugo/CI as well so happy to help out and participate on this.

[opus1993]

I have some experience w blogdown, and would be happy to share and help out

[ataustin]

Thanks for the offers, folks! I will probably be picking your brains about best practices. @eddelbuettel you're probably right, this doesn't have a very heavy R focus so might not be the best topic for the collab. But I'll be interested in gathering everyone's input and possibly setting something up in our copious spare time 😄

[nataliablock]

I would definitely join you guys! I've been planning to set up a blog for myself but there is so much information out there that I get confused and give up at the end 😆

[ataustin]

@nataliablock excellent! I agree with you, I think part of the problem is the proliferation of possibilities and I don't know what would be the easiest to get started with, to make useful docs, and to publish.

[srmorales08]

Starting a blog is something that has been on my bucket list for long time now. I'd be happy to get together and work on this little project!

[rpodcast]

Even though my sites are more on the multimedia side, they are most definitely produced with blogdown and I'd be happy to share tips and tricks I've learned along the way!

• My first attempt: r-podcast.org
• More recent: shinydevseries.com

[nataliablock]

Hi @rpodcast ! Sorry it took me so long to see this message! I think I got a bit lost with all the changes in my routine after the quarantine.

Thanks for sending this! I actually was studying how to put together my own website with blowdown last Friday and was messing with this template you've used on you shinydevseries blog. I've set it up with netlify but am planning to purchase my own domain. Next step will be personalizing my own theme. Do you remember if you used one of the Hugo Academic's template or you personalized yours?