Week 1: Getting Set Up

First impressions, and getting the workflow running.
Published

August 28, 2026

What We Did

This week, I set up the basic workflow for my course portfolio. I created a repository from the course template, cloned it to my computer with GitHub Desktop, opened the project in RStudio, edited a Quarto file, and rendered it as a webpage. I then committed and pushed the changes to GitHub so that they could appear on my GitHub Pages site.

I also learned that a website can be understood as a collection of HTML files stored on a computer or server. Quarto helps create those HTML files: I write content in a .qmd file, and Quarto renders it into an .html file that a web browser can display.

Key Concepts

Three places a file can live:

  1. My computer — where I edit
  2. GitHub.com — where it’s stored
  3. My live site — what the world sees

The loop: Edit → Save → Render → Commit → Push → wait → refresh

Proving R Works

The chunk below runs when this page renders. If you can see a result underneath it on your published site, R and Quarto are talking to each other correctly.

sessionInfo()$R.version$version.string
[1] "R version 4.6.1 (2026-06-24)"

Reflection

What I want out of this course:

I want to become more comfortable using R for data analysis and learn how to present my results through a clear website. I like that the portfolio will keep my coursework in one place and give me something I can show after the semester.

One thing I’m nervous about:

Using Git

Questions I Still Have

-No Questions so far