Customizing the Home Page

Overview

The home page is generated from your package’s README.md or README.qmd. qrtdown automatically adds a sidebar with package metadata, similar to pkgdown.

Home Page Source

qrtdown looks for your home page content in this order:

1. README.qmd - Quarto markdown (preferred for executable code)
2. README.md - Standard markdown

The content becomes your site’s index.qmd.

Sidebar

The sidebar displays package metadata from your DESCRIPTION file. By default it shows:

Section	Content
Links	Source code and bug report URLs
License	Package license
Citation	Link to citation page (if inst/CITATION exists)
Authors	Package authors with their roles

Customizing the Sidebar

Control which sections appear in _qrtdown.yml:

home:
  sidebar:
    - links
    - license
    - citation
    - authors

Show Only Specific Sections

home:
  sidebar:
    - license
    - authors

Disable the Sidebar

home:
  sidebar: false

Sidebar Content Sources

The sidebar pulls data from your DESCRIPTION file:

Sidebar Section	DESCRIPTION Field
Links	URL, BugReports
License	License
Authors	Authors@R

The Citation link only appears if inst/CITATION exists:

use_qrtdown_citation()  # Creates inst/CITATION

Images on the Home Page

Place images in man/figures/ for use in your README:

man/
└── figures/
    ├── logo.png
    └── screenshot.png

Reference them in README.md:

![Package logo](man/figures/logo.png)

Example Home Configuration

# Minimal sidebar - just license and authors
home:
  sidebar:
    - license
    - authors

# Full sidebar with all sections
home:
  sidebar:
    - links
    - license
    - citation
    - authors

# No sidebar
home:
  sidebar: false