Website :: R-Ladies organizational guidance

Contribute to the RLadies+ Blog

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The RLadies+ blog is where members write down what they have built, learned, organised, or noticed. Posts come from chapter organisers, mentors, package authors, conference speakers, anyone in the community who has something worth sharing. We publish in markdown, on the main RLadies+ website, through pull requests on the website repository. This page walks through everything from “I have an idea for a post” to “the post is live on the site”. The companion guide Working with the website covers the general fork-clone-PR mechanics if Git is new to you.

Adding a chapter

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

A chapter is a JSON file under data/chapters/ in the website repository. The chapter list at https://rladies.org/chapters/, the world map on the home page, and the per-chapter pages all read from these files. Adding or updating a chapter means adding or editing one JSON file and opening a PR. The chapters live in the website repo, not the directory repo. That is intentional — chapter information is public, the directory is access-controlled, and they are organisationally distinct concerns.

Updating chapter organisers

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

When an organiser steps down from their chapter, two things need to happen. Their role on meetup.com is changed from organiser to member. Their entry in the chapter’s JSON file is moved from the current list to the former list. Both tasks are quick. The instructions below cover each. Task 1: Change the organiser’s role on meetup.com You need to be signed in with the RLadies+ Global meetup account. Some browsers (Firefox in particular) have intermittently struggled with the Pro Dashboard interface — Chrome usually works.

Add a new mentoring entry

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The mentoring page on the site, at https://rladies.org/about-us/global-team/mentoring/, surfaces stories of chapters that have run a mentorship and what they got out of it. Each story is a small page bundle under content/mentoring/, with a quote from the mentee and a link to a longer blog post telling the full story. Adding one is a small PR. You will first need your own local copy of the website. You only need Hugo Extended installed — no R, no blogdown, no renv.

Adding a press mention

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The press page at https://rladies.org/about-us/press/ lists every press mention RLadies+ has earned, year by year. Each entry is a small page bundle under content/about-us/press//. Adding one is a small PR — a folder, an index.en.md, optionally a PDF. Folder structure Each press mention is its own folder named after the publication date in YYYY-MM-DD form. If two entries land on the same date, append the outlet name to the folder: content/about-us/press/2021-10-30-times/ └── index.en.md content/about-us/press/2021-10-30-buzzfeed/ └── index.en.md content/about-us/press/2021-12-23/ └── index.en.md The folder name does not need to be repeated in the URL — Hugo will use it as the slug, so the article ends up at /about-us/press/2021-10-30-times/.

Images on the website

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Most pages on rladies.org can carry an image — used as the page’s Open Graph (social-share) preview, as a hero illustration in the layout, or both. We use one consistent shape for image frontmatter across the whole site, so contributors only need to remember a single pattern. The image frontmatter Every image in frontmatter is a YAML map with three keys: image: path: my-photo.jpg alt: "Short factual description of what the image shows." credit: "[Photographer name](https://link-to-source/)" path — required. The filename of the image, relative to the page bundle (the folder that contains the page’s index.md or _index.md). The image must live alongside the page so it’s a Hugo page resource. alt — optional but strongly encouraged when the image conveys information. Describe what is in the image, not what page it sits on. If the image is purely decorative or you cannot accurately describe it, leave alt out — bad alt text is worse than none. credit — optional. Plain string or markdown (links are fine). Used when an image’s licence requires attribution, or when you simply want to credit a photographer. Where the templates render an image, they read these three fields directly. The same shape is used for the OG / Twitter card meta tags in .

Editing the home page

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The rladies.org home page is composed of a stack of sections — hero, impact, chapters, get-involved, featured members, latest posts, sponsors. Each section’s text and imagery live in frontmatter, not in i18n files or template code, so contributors can change copy and visuals without touching the theme. Where the home content lives content/ ├── _index.en.md ← English home page ├── _index.es.md ← Spanish ├── _index.fr.md ← French ├── _index.pt.md ← Portuguese └── _img/ ← all home-page images ├── og-image.png ├── women-meeting-1.jpg └── … Each language file is independent — title, descriptions, CTAs, and image alt text are translated by editing the file for that language. Image files are shared across languages (page resources are bundle-wide), so only _img/ needs one copy.

Working with the website

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

This is the practical, “how do I get a copy of the site running on my laptop and submit a change” guide. It is written for someone who has used Git lightly — pushed a commit before, opened a pull request before — and who is comfortable enough on the command line not to be derailed by it. If that is not you yet, Happy Git with R is the gentler ramp.

Multi-lingual support

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The RLadies+ website is built for a global audience. Translation is a first-class feature, not an afterthought. The site currently supports four languages — English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French — using Hugo’s multilingual mode and a small home-grown layer for placeholder generation. Translations live in three different places, depending on what you are translating. UI strings (menu items, button labels, “Read more”, “Skip to main content”) live in i18n/.yaml. Templates pull these via {{ i18n "key" }}.

Frequently asked questions

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Why is the site plain Hugo and not blogdown / Quarto? Three reasons. The site is mostly not “rendered content”. The majority of updates are to data (chapters, directory, events) or to plain prose pages — nothing that needs an R kernel to produce. The blog is the one place where authors might want a computational document, and the convention there is to commit the rendered .md next to any .qmd/.Rmd source so Hugo only sees the markdown. Old posts never need to be re-rendered.

Website Admin Guide

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Maintaining the RLadies+ site is part editorial work, part low-key sysadmin. Tasks range from restructuring whole sections of the site, to reviewing incoming pull requests, to debugging a directory entry that did not show up where the contributor expected. The pages under this section are the working knowledge of the website team — the things you will reach for when something is broken, when somebody asks “where does X live”, or when you onboard a new team member.