9  Build and publish the cohort website

Each cohort gets its own website, generated from the gitforsci-dev/website template into your iteration org. The website is the learners’ home base: it holds the pre-course work, the schedule, and links to everything. This chapter is the checklist to generate it, fill in its details, render it, and publish it.

Replace the iteration tag 001 with your own throughout (for example cis).

9.1 Step 1: Generate the site from the template

• Go to gitforsci-dev/website on GitHub.
• Click Use this template, then Create a new repository.
• Set the owner to gitforsci-001 and the repository name to website.
• Create the repository.

This produces gitforsci-001/website as an independent repository with clean history and no live link back to the template. It is a frozen snapshot you can edit freely without affecting the template or other cohorts.

New educator — if the Use this template button is missing, the template flag is not set on gitforsci-dev/website. Go back to Chapter 8, step 2, and check Template repository in its settings.

9.2 Step 2: Clone the new website locally

• In RStudio, create a new project from version control, pointing at gitforsci-001/website.
• Confirm the project opens and you can see the files, including _quarto.yml and _variables.yml.

9.3 Step 3: Fill in the iteration variables

The template uses two configuration files. _variables.yml holds the values that change every cohort; _quarto.yml is the site configuration. Open _variables.yml and replace every placeholder with this cohort’s real values.

Fields you will set in _variables.yml:

Field	What to put
Course title	The human-readable course title (“Git for Scientists”)
Iteration	This cohort’s tag (001 or cis)
Cohort label	A free-form label, for example “Spring 2026”
Start and end dates	ISO dates for the cohort
Timezone	The IANA timezone for live sessions
Course website URL	The published URL of this site
GitHub organization	gitforsci-001
Instructor name, ORCID, affiliation, GitHub, email	Your details

Important

Do not invent values you do not have. Leave a field as its placeholder, or as a clearly marked “to fill in,” rather than guessing a URL, ORCID, or DOI. A placeholder is honest; a wrong value is a bug a learner will hit.

• Replace each placeholder in _variables.yml with a real value or a clearly marked to-do.
• Save the file.

9.4 Step 4: Update the site configuration

Open _quarto.yml and update the fields that are specific to this cohort:

Field	What to put
Project / site title	Match the iteration
Site URL	The published URL of this cohort site
Repository URL	https://github.com/gitforsci-001/website
Repository branch	Usually main

• Update each cohort-specific field in _quarto.yml.
• Leave template-level fields (theme, navbar, sidebar structure) alone. If you find yourself changing those every cohort, push the change back into gitforsci-dev/website so future cohorts inherit it.

9.5 Step 5: Render the site locally

• In the RStudio terminal, run quarto preview.
• Confirm the site builds without errors and opens in your browser.
• Click through the pre-course work pages and confirm your variable values flow through (the title, dates, and instructor name should all show correctly).

If the variables show as placeholders in the rendered pages, you missed an entry in step 3.

9.6 Step 6: Publish the site

• Commit your changes and push them to gitforsci-001/website.
• Enable GitHub Pages for the repository (Settings, then Pages), or publish with quarto publish gh-pages from the terminal.
• Confirm the published URL loads and matches the site URL you set in the configuration.

9.7 Optional: web analytics

If you want to know how learners use the site, add privacy-friendly analytics with Plausible (https://plausible.io):

• Register the cohort site’s domain on plausible.io.
• In Plausible, open Site settings, then Tracker, and copy the generated script tag.
• Save it as plausible.html next to _quarto.yml.
• Reference it from _quarto.yml under the HTML format’s include-in-header setting.
• Re-render and confirm visits appear in the Plausible dashboard.

This is optional. The workshop runs fine without it.

9.8 Verify as the test-learner

• Open the published site in your test-learner browser (logged out of the instructor account).
• Confirm the pre-course work pages are reachable and the links work.

A site that a logged-out learner can read end to end is ready to hand out.