Hello blogdown!

Creating a Personal Website with R Blogdown and Hugo-Apero

I was familiar with Rmarkdown and Bookdown but only recently heard about Blogdown. I was intrigued when someone mentioned using it to create a personal website, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that with a few hours of work, I was able to customize my site using the package. In this post, I will share my experience and guide you through using Blogdown to create your own website.

Prerequisites:

• Basic knowledge of R, RStudio and Rmarkdown
• Familiarity with GitHub

Step 1: Create a Repository on GitHub

1. Log in to your GitHub account and create a new repo.
2. Go to the repo’s main page, click the green Code button and copy either the SSH or HTTPS link.

Step 2: Create a project in Rstudio

1. Click File > New Project > Version Control > Git.
2. Paste the copied link from GitHub.
3. Choose a location for the project on your workstation.
4. Click “Create Project.”

Step 3: Create a Website

1. Install the Blogdown package and a Hugo theme. Example:

install.packages("blogdown")
blogdown::install_hugo()
library(blogdown)
new_site(theme = "hugo-apero/hugo-apero") 
# or "wowchemy/starter-academic"

I initially started with the hugo-academic theme but then found the hugo-apero theme fits me better.

2. Preview the website locally using the command blogdown::serve_site() or the RStudio Addins menu.

Now it’s time to see the sample. Click to “Show in new window” (to the right of the 🧹 icon) to preview it in a normal browser window. When you do that, you’ll be re-directed to the site’s main homepage.

Step 4: Personalize Content

1. Go to the content folder in your project to edit the markdown files.
2. Add front matter metadata like title, date, and author.
3. Add images to the static/img folder and reference them in your markdown files. I used Canva to create logo and Unsplash for photos.
4. Customize the website’s style with CSS by editing the CSS files in the theme folder.

Step 5: Publish website

1. Push the code to the GitHub repository. When you’re happy with the content of your site, it’s time to publish it! To do this, you need to push your code to your GitHub repository.

git add .
git commit -m "Your commit message"
git push origin master/main

2. Deploy the website using a service like Netlify by connecting it to the GitHub repo. To make your website live, you need to deploy it. I hosted my website’s source code on GitHub and created a new account on Netlify, which made it easy to deploy my site. Simply follow the instructions on the Netlify site to connect your GitHub repository and deploy your site. And that’s it! Your website should now be live and accessible to the public!

Creating a personal website using blogdown in R was easier and quicker than I thought. It was a fun and educational experience 😃. Give it a try and see how you can create your own website today!