Awesome

This is a template for creating an HTML GitBook style bookdown book, hosted on GitHub Pages. It is based on the one created with File, New Project..., New Directory, Book Project using bookdown in RStudio. It assumes you know how to use git/GitHub and R Markdown, and have some familiarity with the bookdown package. If you don't, the package author Yihue Xie's RStudio webinar Introduction to Bookdown (R Package) provides an excellent introduction. In addition, check out bookdown: Authoring Books and Technical Documents with R Markdown, also by Yihui Xie, both for the content and the format--it is itself a bookdown book. If you need help getting git/GitHub to work with RStudio see: Happy Git and GitHub for the useR by Jenny Bryan.

ABSOLUTE ESSENTIALS

If you have any difficulties or have feedback of any kind, please file an issue or communicate through Discussions.

Copy this template (GitHub)

• 1. Click the green "Use this template" button above. DO NOT FORK THE REPO. Choose a descriptive name for your repo based on your content. (Unlike when you fork a repo, you get to choose the name. If you change your mind before you do any work, delete your new repo and start over.)

Set up Pages (GitHub)

• 1. On the home page of your repo, click Settings. Click the "Pages" section on the left. In the Build and Deployment section, set Source to "Deploy from a branch" (Classic Pages experience) and Branch to main with /docs folder. Click Save. Above the Build and Deployment section, a box will appear with your book's URL. Copy the URL. (Note that sometimes there is a delay until your book actually appears at that URL. If it doesn't appear after a few minutes, make a change and commit it to trigger a GitHub Pages build.)

• 2. Click the gear button near "About" on the home page of the repo and paste your book URL into the Website field that appears on the right.

Copy the repo link (GitHub)

• 1. Click the green Code button and copy the link under HTTPS. It should have the format: https://github.com/[USERNAME]/[REPO NAME].git

Clone the repo (RStudio)

• 1. Clone your new repo with File, New Project..., Version Control, Git in RStudio. You will need to paste the link from the previous step in the Repository URL box.

Edit some key files (RStudio)

• 1. In index.Rmd, change YOUR TITLE HERE to your title.

• 2. In index.Rmd, change YOUR NAMES HERE to your names.

• 3. In _bookdown.yml, change YOUR GITHUB USERNAME to your GitHub username in the two places it appears.

• 4. In _bookdown.yml, change YOUR GITHUB REPO to your GitHub repo name in the two places it appears.

(Note that 3. and 4. provide links to the .Rmd files of your project for editing and viewing. If you move your .Rmd files you will need to update these file paths. Once your book is rendered, test that the edit (pen) and view (eye) buttons work.)

• 5. In _output.yml, change YOUR SHORT TITLE to a shortened version of your title. (Leave the "after:" line indicating that the book was published with bookdown as is.)

Render the book (RStudio)

• 1. Install bookdown with install.packages("bookdown"). If you already have it, update to the most recent version.

• 2. Render locally with bookdown::render_book("index.Rmd") or clicking the Build book button which should appear in the Build tab (in the same pane as Environment, History, Connections, ...).

• 3. Use browseURL("docs/index.html") to view your book locally (or just open index.html in a browser).

• 4. If it looks good, commit and push all changed files to GitHub.

(You will need to repeat steps 2 and 4 every time you wish to update the book online.)

Edit README (GitHub or RStudio)

Once you've completed these steps, delete the content of this README and add a short description of your project with a link to the book URL. It would be appreciated if you add the following to the end:

This repo was initially generated from a bookdown template available here: https://github.com/jtr13/bookdown-template.

(And starring the repo would be nice too!)

Demo Video

A demo video showing how to create a bookdown book following these instructions: http://bit.ly/fiveminutebookdown

Additional features

Please consult the official guide to bookdown: https://bookdown.org/yihui/bookdown