3 Creating an Online Book-style Web Site

With R, Rstudio, and bookdown installed and operational, one is ready to get started making a book. With the download “un-zipped,” the following files should be visible in the new folder’s directory:

• _bookdown.yml
  
• _output.yml
  
• 00-GettingStarted.Rmd
  
• 01-intro.Rmd
  
• 02-textCode.Rmd
  
• 03-dataframe.Rmd
  
• 04-extraTips.Rmd
• 05-references.Rmd
• Beginner0.jpg
  
• book.bib
  
• bookdown-demo.Rproj
  
• datafile.csv
  
• index.Rmd
  
• packages.bib

The best way to start making your own web site is to copy these files into a new directory, and then start editing them (and renaming files, as desired) to make them your own. The file bookdown-demo.Rproj can be renamed to your own project name. Then, the first step is to click on this file (best done with Rstudio not running at first). Clicking this file will start Rstudio and set up the environment for creating your online book.

Click on the Files pane in Rstudio to see the files in your project. The folder containing your files should be set up as your “working directory.”