Introduction:

A little bit about blogdown and the Academic theme here…

Step 1: Install blogdown by running install.packages(“blogdown”) in the console

Step 2: Create file structure in RStudio with File -> New Project … -> New Directory -> Website Using Blogdown -> Hugo theme: gcushen/hugo-academic

This will create a large, overwhelming (if I may) architecture for your website of about 500 files/directories. Let’s look at only the top layer.

Step 3: Load blogdown with library(blogdown)

I’ll be using :: syntax too, so you’ll know what functions come from what packages.

Step 4: Install the “hugo” website framework with blogdown::install_hugo(force = TRUE)

../academic_website
├── academic_website.Rproj
├── config
├── config.toml
├── content
├── index.Rmd
├── public
├── resources
├── static
└── themes

Here’s Dan telling us about it.

Step 5: Build the template blogdown::serve_site()

Note: I found that sometimes expected changes wouldn’t appear withough first Building the site with rmarkdown::render_site(encoding = ‘UTF-8’) and Building the template use blogdown::serve_site()

Step 6: Changing the title of your website in the “config.toml”

# Configuration of Academic
# Documentation: https://sourcethemes.com/academic/
#
# This file is formatted using TOML syntax - learn more at https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/toml/
# Each configuration section is defined by a name in square brackets (e.g. `[outputs]`).

# Title of your site
title = "Gina Reynolds"       <- Change this part!

Step 7: Change color/theme/font of your website in “config/_default/params.toml”

../academic_website/config
└── _default
    ├── languages.toml
    ├── menus.toml
    └── params.toml

This section:

############################
## Theme
############################

# Choose a theme.
#   Latest themes (may require updating): https://sourcethemes.com/academic/themes/
#   Browse built-in themes in `themes/academic/data/themes/`
#   Browse user installed themes in `data/themes/`
theme = "minimal"

Step 8: Adjust what widgets show up in each of the .md files in “content/home/”, e.g. in “content/home/hero.md”, “active = true” to “active = false”

Demo.md looks like this:

+++
# A Demo section created with the Blank widget.
# Any elements can be added in the body: https://sourcethemes.com/academic/docs/writing-markdown-latex/
# Add more sections by duplicating this file and customizing to your requirements.

widget = "blank"  # See https://sourcethemes.com/academic/docs/page-builder/
headless = true  # This file represents a page section.
active = false  # Activate this widget? true/false
weight = 15  # Order that this section will appear.

Step 9: Update your profile photo by saving your photo as ‘avatar.jpg’ in the “content/authors/admin” folder

Overwrite the existing avatar.jpg file with your own photo.

../academic_website/content/authors
└── admin
    ├── _index.md
    └── avatar.jpg

Step 10: Edit your biography details in the “content/authors/admin/_index.md” file

../academic_website/content/authors
└── admin
    ├── _index.md
    └── avatar.jpg

Step 11: Edit your contact details in the “Contact Widget setup” section of config/_default/params.toml"

The section looks like this:

############################
## Contact details
##
## These details power the Contact widget (if enabled).
## Additionally, for organizations, these details may be used to enrich search engine results.
############################

# Enter contact details (optional). To hide a field, clear it to "".

Step 12: Add your CV by copying your CV to “static/files/cv.pdf” and uncommenting

Step 13: Periodically view updates by serving site using blogdown:::serve_site()

You may see them dynamically updating too.

Note: Maybe building the site first with rmarkdown::render_site(encoding = ‘UTF-8’)

To see how your updates look on your website, save the file in Rstudio, and then run the “blogdown:::serve_site()” command.

Step 14: Add your publications in the “content/publication/” folder

Each publication has a dedicated folder. To include your first publication, navigate to the “content/publication/journal-article” folder, and open up the “index” file.

Step 14a:

Step 14b: Edit your publication’s details

Step 14c: Include image to be associated with your paper

just add it to your publication’s folder and call it “featured.jpg”. This might be a figure from you paper.

Note: Change tags for Papers, Talks, and Projects by editing the YAML

Examples give you a lot of little links for projects and allow you to include a lot of information. You may want to comment some of this out with #. For example if you don’t want the deep learning or slides tag:

---
date: "2016-04-27T00:00:00Z"
external_link: ""
image:
  caption: Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash
  focal_point: Smart
links:
- icon: twitter
  icon_pack: fab
  name: Follow
  url: https://twitter.com/georgecushen
# slides: example
summary: An example of using the in-built project page.
# tags: 
# - Deep Learning 
title: Internal Project
url_code: ""
url_pdf: ""
url_slides: ""
url_video: ""
---

Step 15: Change what appears in header menu *by editing config/_default/menus.toml*

For example to delete “demo” comment it out with the # character. Posts will show up, because it is not commented out:


# Navigation Links
#   To link a homepage widget, specify the URL as a hash `#` followed by the filename of the
#     desired widget in your `content/home/` folder.
#   The weight parameter defines the order that the links will appear in.

#[[main]]
#  name = "Demo"
#  url = "#hero"
#  weight = 10

[[main]]
  name = "Posts"
  url = "#posts"
  weight = 80

Step 16: Deploy your website - one way is using Netlify

Step 16a. Create a free account with @Netlify

Step 16b. drag the “public” folder into the box at the bottom of the “deploys” section of your Netlify admin settings.

Step 16c. Edit your domain name, which will include “netlify” at the end of your address.