DEIOAC Statistics Simulators Website

Welcome to the home of the DEIOAC/STATIO statistics simulators website.

This repository hosts the source code and development environment for the website that holds the interactive statistical simulators available to the public. It represents a modern, serverless approach to statistical education tools.

🏗 Architecture & CI/CD

This repository acts as the central hub for the website and CI/CD engine. Its primary purpose is to aggregate simulator modules, compile them, and deploy the full static website.

The Container (Quarto): The website structure, navigation, and layout are built using Quarto.

The Content (Shiny & WebAssembly): The simulators are developed in R using shiny. Instead of relying on a backend server, we utilize ShinyLive to compile these apps into WebAssembly. This allows the R code to execute entirely within the client's browser.

The Deployment: Pushing to this repository triggers web hosting service to automatically pull this repository, updating the web and enabling CI/CD.

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🧰 Prerequisites

To contribute to the website structure or integrate new simulators, ensure you have the following installed:

• Git: https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/git-basics/set-up-git\
• Quarto: https://quarto.org/docs/download/\
• R 4.5.x: https://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/base/
• R Tools >=4.5: https://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/Rtools/
• RStudio (Recommended IDE)

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🚀 Host this Project

To host a similar web-based project to the one shown here, users should:

0. Fork this repository

1. Open RStudio and go to File → New Project → Version Control.

2. Select Git.

3. Copy the forked Repository URL.

4. Choose your local directory and click Create Project.

📂 Repository Structure

· StatisticalSimulators/: The Module Hub. This directory contains the individual simulator projects. Each folder here represents a distinct simulation tool.

· _site/: The fully rendered static website (automated output).

· index.qmd: The homepage source configuration.

· renv/: The project-level R environment management.

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🧱 Adding a new Simulator to the Website

Simulators are essentially modular units within this website. To add a new one:

1. Scaffold the Module

      1.1. Navigate to the StatisticalSimulators/ directory.

      1.2 Duplicate the template/ folder.

      1.3 Rename the folder (e.g., ttest).

2. Configure Metadata

Open the index.qmd file inside your new simulator folder and update:

• Title, Description, Category, Image.

• Iframe Path: Update the source path from /template/ to your new folder name (e.g., /ttest/).

🖥 Developing your new Simulator

Navigate to your module's source (e.g., StatisticalSimulators/ttest/appr/) and open app.R.

Environment Setup

Before editing the R code, ensure the environment is synced by running this in the R Console:

renv::restore()
renv::activate()

# Install compilation tools if missing
install.packages(c("shinylive", "S7", "munsell", "shiny"))

Tip: You can develop standard Shiny code here. Use Run App in RStudio to test logic interactively.

🌐 Compiling your Simulator and WebAssembly Export

To integrate the simulator into the static website, it must be compiled from R to WebAssembly using shinylive.

Run in R Console:

shinylive::export(
  "./StatisticalSimulators/your_module_name/appr",   # Source R Code
  "./StatisticalSimulators/your_module_name/appsite" # Compiled WebAssembly
)

Example:

shinylive::export("./StatisticalSimulators/template/appr", "./StatisticalSimulators/template/appsite")

Once exported, you can verify the standalone build:

httpuv::runStaticServer("./StatisticalSimulators/your_module_name/appsite")

🧱 Build the Full Website

After the simulator module is compiled, you must rebuild the Quarto website wrapper to include the new content.

Run in Terminal::

quarto render

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⬆️ Deployment & Git

We use a standard version control flow to manage the website and its content.

1. Update Local Repo:

git pull

2. Stage Changes:

git add .

3. Commit and Push:

git commit -m "Integrated new simulator: T-Test"
git push

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📌 Command Summary Cheat Sheet

# --- START SESSION ---
git pull

# --- COMPILE SIMULATOR (R Console) ---
shinylive::export("./StatisticalSimulators/my_sim/appr", "./StatisticalSimulators/my_sim/appsite")

# --- BUILD WEBSITE (Terminal) ---
quarto render

# --- DEPLOY (Terminal) ---
git add .
git commit -m "Update website content"
git push

🌍 Hosting

This repository is designed to be hosted on any static web hosting service (GitHub Pages, Netlify, Plesk, etc.).

Because the R logic is pre-compiled to WebAssembly, no specialized R server (like Shiny Server or RStudio Connect) is required. The entire site is just HTML, CSS, and JS, making it robust, fast, and easy to scale.