SEMinR Website Repository

This is the repository for the SEMinR website, intended for SEMinR authors, maintainers, and collaborators to design and maintain the SEMinR website. The site is built with Quarto and deployed via GitHub Pages.

Setup

Clone this repo: Get the website repo from GitHub.

git clone git@github.com:sem-in-r/sem-in-r.github.io.git

Install Quarto: Download and install the Quarto CLI from https://quarto.org/docs/get-started/. That is the only dependency needed to render and preview the site — the site is static prose, code, and images (no R execution required to build).

Verify it is installed:

quarto --version

The rendered site is written to a gitignored _build/docs/ folder for local preview; Quarto creates it automatically on the first render.

Working with Git

Important branches:

• main - major code branch where all changes to the site source code are made
• build - where all rendered content is placed (do not edit or push this branch directly); note that you will not find the build branch in your normal checkout — only the website manager maintains it (it is a separate checkout under _build/).

Working with branches: Please branch out of main and work in your own branch only. Create your articles/posts and submit a Pull Request (PR) back to main. Do not include the _build/ folder in your PRs — the website maintainer re-renders after merge.

Rendering & Previewing the Website

Live preview (recommended while writing): render + serve with live reload in one command. Editing any .qmd or the theme re-renders and refreshes the browser automatically:

quarto preview

One-shot render of the whole site to _build/docs/:

quarto render

(Claude Code users: the /preview and /build skills wrap these.)

Creating New Blog Posts

See any existing post under posts/ (e.g. posts/2021-05-26-seminr-20-released/) as a model.

Posts live in dated folders under posts/, each with an index.qmd. The News listing (posts.qmd) auto-discovers them — there is no per-post build step, and no listing to hand-edit.

Create a new post: make a dated folder and a starter index.qmd. Claude Code users can run the /new-post skill, which scaffolds this given a title. Manually:

mkdir -p posts/2026-07-10-my-post-title/images

Then create posts/2026-07-10-my-post-title/index.qmd with frontmatter:

---
title: "My Post Title"
description: |
  One or two sentences summarizing the post — shown on the News listing.
author:
  - name: Your Name
    url: https://your-url.example
date: 2026-07-10
image: /images/seminr_logos/seminr-logo.png
---

Edit your post:

• Write the body in Markdown below the frontmatter. Use native Quarto features — e.g. ::: {.panel-tabset} for language-switcher code tabs.
• image: is the listing thumbnail. The default above is the landscape SEMinR wordmark (the site default when a post has no image of its own). For post specific art, put files in the post's images/ folder and set image: images/your-thumbnail.png.
• Use the post's images/ folder for all other images in the post too.
• Run quarto preview (or /preview) to see it live; the post appears on the News listing automatically, newest first.