Build a complete pkgdown website

build_site() is a convenient wrapper around six functions:

See the documentation for the each function to learn how to control that aspect of the site. This page documents options that affect the whole site.

Usage

build_site(
  pkg = ".",
  examples = TRUE,
  run_dont_run = FALSE,
  seed = 1014L,
  lazy = FALSE,
  override = list(),
  preview = NA,
  devel = FALSE,
  new_process = !devel,
  install = !devel
)

Arguments

pkg

Path to package.

examples

Run examples?

run_dont_run

Run examples that are surrounded in \dontrun?

seed

Seed used to initialize random number generation in order to make article output reproducible. An integer scalar or NULL for no seed.

lazy

If TRUE, will only rebuild articles and reference pages if the source is newer than the destination.

override

An optional named list used to temporarily override values in _pkgdown.yml

preview

If TRUE, or is.na(preview) && interactive(), will preview freshly generated section in browser.

devel

Use development or deployment process?

If TRUE, uses lighter-weight process suitable for rapid iteration; it will run examples and vignettes in the current process, and will load code with pkgload::load_all().

If FALSE, will first install the package to a temporary library, and will run all examples and vignettes in a new process.

build_site() defaults to devel = FALSE so that you get high fidelity outputs when you building the complete site; build_reference(), build_home() and friends default to devel = TRUE so that you can rapidly iterate during development.

new_process

If TRUE, will run build_site() in a separate process. This enhances reproducibility by ensuring nothing that you have loaded in the current process affects the build process.

install

If TRUE, will install the package in a temporary library so it is available for vignettes.

General config

destination controls where the site will be generated, defaulting to docs/. Paths are relative to the package root.
url is optional, but strongly recommended.
```
url: https://pkgdown.r-lib.org
```
It specifies where the site will be published and is used to allow other pkgdown sites to link to your site when needed (vignette("linking")), generate a sitemap.xml, automatically generate a CNAME when deploying to github, generate the metadata needed rich social "media cards" (vignette("metadata")), and more.
title overrides the default site title, which is the package name. It's used in the page title and default navbar.

The navbar and footer fields control the appearance of the navbar footer which appear on every page. Learn more about these fields in vignette("customise").

Development mode

The development field allows you to generate different sites for the development and released versions of your package. To use it, you first need to set the development mode:

development:
  mode: auto

Setting development mode

The development mode of a site controls where the built site is placed and how it is styled (i.e. the colour of the package version in the navbar, the version tooltip), and whether or not the site is indexed by search engines. There are four possible modes:

automatic (mode: auto): determines the mode based on the version:
- 0.0.0.9000 (0.0.0.*): unreleased.
- four version components: development.
- everything else -> release.
release (mode: release), the default. Site is written to docs/ and styled like a released package, even if the content is for an unreleased or development version. Version in navbar gets the default colouring. Development badges are not shown in the sidebar (see ?build_home).
development (mode: devel). Site is written to docs/dev/. The navbar version gets a "danger" class and a tooltip stating these are docs for an in-development version of the package. The noindex meta tag is used to ensure that these packages are not indexed by search engines. Development badges are shown in the sidebar (see ?build_home).
unreleased (mode: unreleased). Site is written to docs/. Version in navbar gets the "danger" class, and a message indicating the package is not yet on CRAN. Development badges are shown in the sidebar (see ?build_home).

Use mode: auto if you want both a released and a dev site, and mode: release if you just want a single site. It is very rare that you will need either devel or unreleased modes.

You can override the mode specified in the _pkgdown.yml by setting by setting PKGDOWN_DEV_MODE to devel or release.

Selective HTML

You can selectively show HTML only on the devel or release site by adding class pkgdown-devel or pkgdown-release. This is most easily accessed from .Rmd files where you can use pandoc's <div> syntax to control where a block of markdown will display. For example, you can use the following markdown in your README to only show GitHub install instructions on the development version of your site:

::: {.pkgdown-devel}
You can install the development version of pkgdown from GitHub with:
`remotes::install_github("r-lib/pkgdown")`
:::

You can use a similar technique to control where badges are displayed. This markdown show the CRAN status badge on the site for the released package and the GitHub check status for the development package:

[![CRAN Status](https://www.r-pkg.org/badges/version/pkgdown)]
  (https://cran.r-project.org/package=pkgdown){.pkgdown-release}
[![R-CMD-check](https://github.com/r-lib/pkgdown/workflows/R-CMD-check/badge.svg)]
  (https://github.com/r-lib/pkgdown/actions){.pkgdown-devel}

Other options

There are three other options that you can control:

development:
  destination: dev
  version_label: danger
  version_tooltip: "Custom message here"

destination allows you to override the default subdirectory used for the development site; it defaults to dev/. version_label allows you to override the style used for development (and unreleased) versions of the package. It defaults to "danger", but you can set to "default", "info", or "warning" instead. (The precise colours are determined by your bootstrap theme, but become progressively more eye catching as you go from default to danger). Finally, you can choose to override the default tooltip with version_tooltip.

Template

The template field is mostly used to control the appearance of the site. See vignette("customise") for details. But it's also used to control

Other aspects

There are a few other template fields that control other aspects of the site:

noindex: true will suppress indexing of your pages by search engines:
```
template:
  params:
    noindex: true
```

google_site_verification allows you to verify your site with google:

template:
  params:
    google_site_verification: _nn6ile-a6x6lctOW

trailing_slash_redirect: true will automatically redirect your-package-url.com to your-package-url.com/, using a JS script added to the <head> of the home page. This is useful in certain redirect scenarios.
```
template:
  trailing_slash_redirect: true
```

Analytics

To capture usage of your site with a web analytics tool, you can make use of the includes field to add the special HTML they need. This HTML is typically placed in_header (actually in the <head>), before_body, or after_body. You can learn more about how includes work in pkgdown at https://pkgdown.r-lib.org/articles/customise.html#additional-html-and-files.

I include a few examples of popular analytics platforms below, but we recommend getting the HTML directly from the tool:

plausible.io:

template:
  includes:
    in_header: |
      <script defer data-domain="{YOUR DOMAIN}" src="https://plausible.io/js/plausible.js"></script>

Google analytics:

template:
  includes:
    in_header: |
       <!-- Global site tag (gtag.js) - Google Analytics -->
       <script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id={YOUR TRACKING ID}"#' ></script>
       <script>
         window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
         function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
         gtag('js', new Date());

         gtag('config', '{YOUR TRACKING ID}');
       </script>

GoatCounter:

template:
  includes:
    after_body: >
      <script data-goatcounter="https://{YOUR CODE}.goatcounter.com/count" data-goatcounter-settings="{YOUR SETTINGS}" async src="https://gc.zgo.at/count.js"></script>

Source repository

Use the repo field to override pkgdown's automatically discovery of your source repository. This is used in the navbar, on the homepage, in articles and reference topics, and in the changelog (to link to issue numbers and user names). pkgdown can automatically figure out the necessary URLs if you link to a GitHub or GitLab repo in your BugReports or URL field.

Otherwise, you can supply your own in the repo field:

repo:
  url:
    home: https://github.com/r-lib/pkgdown/
    source: https://github.com/r-lib/pkgdown/blob/HEAD/
    issue: https://github.com/r-lib/pkgdown/issues/
    user: https://github.com/

home: path to package home on source code repository.
source: path to source of individual file in default branch (more on that below).
issue: path to individual issue.
user: path to user.

The varying components (e.g. path, issue number, user name) are pasted on the end of these URLs so they should have trailing /s.

When creating the link to a package source, we have to link to a specific branch. The default behaviour is to use current branch when in GitHub actions and HEAD otherwise. You can overide this default with repo.branch:

repo:
  branch: devel

pkgdown can automatically link to Jira issues as well if specify both a custom issue URL as well Jira project names to auto-link in jira_projects. You can specify as many projects as you would like:

repo:
  jira_projects: [this_project, another_project]
  url:
    issue: https://jira.organisation.com/jira/browse/

Deployment (`deploy`)

There is a single deploy field

install_metadata allows you to install package index metadata into the package itself. Normally this metadata is made available on the published site; installing it into your package means that it's available for autolinking even if your website is not reachable at build time (e.g. because behind a firewall or requires auth).
```
deploy:
  install_metadata: true
```

Options

Users with limited internet connectivity can disable CRAN checks by setting options(pkgdown.internet = FALSE). This will also disable some features from pkgdown that requires an internet connectivity. However, if it is used to build docs for a package that requires internet connectivity in examples or vignettes, this connection is required as this option won't apply on them.

Users can set a timeout for build_site(new_process = TRUE) with options(pkgdown.timeout = Inf), which is useful to prevent stalled builds from hanging in cron jobs.

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
build_site()

build_site(override = list(destination = tempdir()))
} # }