Breeding Insight Software Hub: Quarto starter

A repo-ready starter for a unified Breeding Insight software, tutorial, workshop, and documentation portal.

Design intent

• Tidyverse-inspired software directory: concise tool descriptions with direct routes to docs, source, installation, and tutorials.
• Workflow-first learning: tutorials are organized around outcomes and may span packages.
• Durable workshops: each event can bundle setup, modules, exercises, solutions, and recordings.
• One BI visual system: shared colors, typography, logo, and UI patterns.

Local preview

Requires Quarto 1.6+ for _brand.yml; a current Quarto release is recommended.

quarto preview

Render

quarto render

The site is written to _site/.

Add software

1. Copy an existing file in software/.
2. Update title, description, domain, form, tasks, tags, links, and image in YAML (see "Required software metadata" in CONTRIBUTING.md).
3. For an app hosted online, set links.online to its GitHub Pages landing page and add a "Use online" button under "Start here".
4. Render. The software.qmd catalog updates automatically.

Add learning material

1. Create a .qmd file in learn/.
2. Include title, description, topic-only categories, image, order, learning-type, software, level, and keywords.
3. Use the controlled vocabulary documented in CONTRIBUTING.md.
4. Follow the tutorial pattern in resources.qmd.
5. For a concept page, use the concise explanatory pattern in learn/what-is-allele-dosage.qmd.
6. Render. The learn.qmd listing and topic discovery system update from page metadata.

The Learn page is task-first. Broad scientific topics drive visible categories; package names, difficulty, content type, and precise search terms remain separate metadata dimensions. Goal cards can pre-filter the Quarto listing through shareable ?filter= URLs. A custom metadata-driven listing template renders learning-type, software, and level as distinct badges while retaining searchable topic tags.

Analytics

The site uses Google Analytics 4, UF's standard analytics tool, through Quarto's built-in support. Set google-analytics in _quarto.yml to the GA4 Measurement ID and uncomment the cookie-consent block below it. Links tagged with data-analytics-event send a GA4 event when clicked (assets/analytics-events.html); the "Use online" buttons on tool pages send use_online with a tool parameter. GA4's automatic outbound-click tracking does not cover these because the app landing pages share the breeding-insight.github.io domain with this site. To report on tool, register it as a custom dimension in GA4 (Admin > Custom definitions).

Deployment

The included GitHub Actions workflow renders the site and publishes the _site/ artifact with GitHub Pages.

Before first deployment:

1. Update website.site-url in _quarto.yml.
2. Update website.repo-url to the actual repository.
3. In GitHub repository settings, set Pages source to GitHub Actions.

Migration strategy

• Keep package API reference canonical in package-specific docs/pkgdown sites.
• Move durable tutorials and workshops into this portal.
• Link to release notes and function reference rather than copying them.
• Add redirects from old URLs where possible.