This is a template for a simple Quarto website that looks like a "book". This is a common format for documentation. It includes a GitHub Action that will build the website automatically when you make changes to the files. The webpage will use the gh-pages branch. Serving the website files from this branch is a common way to keep all the website files from cluttering your main branch.
Note: The GitHub Action installs R so you can render qmd files with R code. Edit to install Python or Julia if your qmd uses those instead. If you have substantial computations, you don't want to be re-running all the computations for files that didn't change. Read about the freeze option for this situation. R users with complex reports with dependencies (so qmd B depends on qmd A or data file A) should be aware of the {targets} package which will help you keep track of files that need to be re-rendered due to changes in dependencies.
- Click the green "Use This Template" button to make a repository with this content. Make sure to make your repo public (since GitHub Pages doesn't work on private repos unless you have a paid account) and check box to include all the branches (so that you get the gh-pages branch).
- Turn on GitHub Pages under Settings > Pages . You will set pages to be made from the gh-pages branch and root directory.
- Turn on GitHub Actions under Settings > Actions > General
- Edit the repo description and Readme to add a link to the webpage. When you edit the description, you will see the link url in the url box or you can click on the Actions tab or the Settings > Pages page to find the url to the Quarto website
- Edit the qmd or md files in the
contentfolder. qmd files can include code (R, Python, Julia) and lots of Quarto markdown bells and whistles (like call-outs, cross-references, auto-citations and much more). - Add the files to
_quarto.yml