Add an option to make create_site_academic() less overwhelming?

[maelle]

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Not sure if it's really useful but I am overwhelmed by all the stuff that's created by the function and was wondering whether there's a way to build the website that starts from having less things and adding folders (rather than editing and deleting). I guess I am wondering how @apreshill creates all her academic websites. :wink:

[apreshill]

Which folders would you add manually? Are you thinking mainly in content/?

[maelle]

I'm not sure, that and the navbar are so full. I'm worried newcomers might feel overwhelmed, but you know more about newcomers than I do.

I think it's easier to show how to create a website with the xmin theme and then with academic? I'm doing that right now in my demo notes (using xmin).

[maelle]

I mean, if you always start from all folders and then tweak, that means it's the way to go :-) I guess I just miss a simpler alternative in hugodown but I can create it myself without the helper function. :thinking:

[maelle]

very messy notes at the moment https://scientific-rmd-blogging.netlify.app/hugo/demo/ -- I'm thinking I'll show xmin first. Maybe I should PR a helper function here instead of complaining about academic being so complete :grin:

[apreshill]

Yea, I started teaching with the default lithium theme many moons ago. For what it's worth, I think the necessary folder structure for a Hugo site is overwhelming no matter what 😄

For academic, I agree the demo exampleSite is overwhelming. Over the years (:sob:), if I'm able to assume or have time to teach GitHub too, here is my workflow:

1. Design my own demo site (I heavily prune the exampleSite, but ADD nicer themes in the data/ folder)

2. Put it on Github with a "deploy to Netlify" button

3. Learners start by deploying (which also forks the repo for them!)

4. They then clone to a local setup and we go through personalizing my demo site piece-by-piece (authors bio, home page widgets, navbar, adding content)

So at the end, everyone leaves with a personalized site that I know works! It is also in their GitHub and already deployed to Netlify, so any future tweaks they do will show up.

If I cannot assume or teach GitHub, I like usethis::use_course() with my custom demo site, followed by a drag-and-drop deploy of public/ folder to Netlify, then trim down. But they'll need to rebuild and re-drop to see the changes online.

At this point, I think you helped me draft a blog post on my to-do list for how I like to teach Hugo with the academic theme 😆

[apreshill]

Having said all that, a cool helper function for teaching would be to be able to specify a repo that holds a different exampleSite than the one that ships with the theme.

[maelle]

This is super useful, thanks for your insights!

Didn't someone (Leo Collado Torres?) made an R package to easily set up a blogdown academic btw? I can't find it.

[maelle]

Ah: https://github.com/ComunidadBioInfo/easyweb