Build and deploy website for R package

After development a R package and push into github, I want to build a reference website, and automatically deploy it with my sub-domain.

Setup pkgdown

pkgdown is an very powerful tool to make it quick and easy to build a website for R package.

# Run once to configure your package to use pkgdown
usethis::use_pkgdown()

# Run to build the website
pkgdown::build_site()

Setup the github actions

The example workflow can be found from pkgdown repository. Download all files into .github folder and modify as I need, e.g. add extra package for building.

All changes are pushed into github and check workflows are passed.

Setup the custom sub-domain

  • Create DNS record with type CNAME and value username.github.io.
  • Create a file CNAME (all upper case) under folder .github.
  • Push the new change into github.
  • Setup the custom domain under the setting of the repository. Wait a few minutes to allow github deploy and apply new settings.
Bangyou Zheng
Bangyou Zheng
Data Scientist / Digital Agronomist

a research scientist of digital agriculture at the CSIRO.