Prework

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the Introducing Yourself Online workshop! We look forward to meeting you. Before attending the workshop, please complete the following prework.

Set up RStudio Cloud

Sign up for a free RStudio Cloud account at https://rstudio.cloud/ before the workshop. I recommend logging in with an existing Google or GitHub account, if you have one (rather than creating a new account with another password you have to remember). I want you to be able to work from your own laptop in this workshop, but Cloud is an important back-up plan should you run into troubles.

Set up GitHub

We will be using GitHub in this workshop for version control and publishing. Sign up for a free GitHub.com account at https://github.com/join if you don’t already have one. Also:

Complete these installation instructions.
Test your connection between GitHub and RStudio following these steps.
NOTE: We strongly recommend that if you are not already a fluent GitHub user you choose HTTPS over SSH.

Brush up on markdown

Please complete this 10-minute interactive tutorial on Markdown.

Installations

Please bring a laptop that has the following installed:

A recent version of R (>=3.6.0), which is available for free at https://cloud.r-project.org/
A recent version of RStudio Desktop (>=1.4), available for free ( RStudio Desktop Open Source License). Read up on the latest version here.
The R packages we will use, which you can install by connecting to the internet, opening RStudio, and running at the command line:
```
> install.packages(c("usethis", "remotes", "distill", 
                   "postcards", "blogdown"))
```
You’ll also need to install the development version of the rmarkdown package:
```
> remotes::install_github("rmarkdown")
```

Install Hugo

To use blogdown, please install Hugo:

> blogdown::install_hugo()

And ensure your current version is at least as high as:

> hugo_version()
[1] ‘0.79.0’

Check pandoc

The RStudio IDE bundles an updated version of pandoc- if you did install v1.4 of the IDE, you should be all set!

> rmarkdown::pandoc_version()
[1] ‘2.11.3’