Get started with qpost

Peter Baumgartner

2026-09-03

The qpost package provides two functions for maintaining a Quarto blog:

qpost() opens an interactive dialog and requires a pane-capable IDE (RStudio or Positron); it will stop with an error if run from a plain R console, Rscript, or a non-interactive script. add_coins() also auto-detects the active file in RStudio/Positron, but can be used from any R session by passing file_path explicitly.

Installation

install.packages("qpost")

Creating a post with qpost()

library(qpost)
qpost()

This opens an interactive dialog (in the Viewer pane or a separate window) where you fill in the post’s title, author, date, and optional fields like subtitle, categories, and a featured image. On submit, qpost() creates the post directory and index.qmd, then opens the file for editing.

Dialog window showing input fields for title, author, date and subtitle

The qpost() dialog window

qpost() is also available as an RStudio Addin under Addins > Create Quarto Post, so you can bind it to a keyboard shortcut.

For the full list of dialog fields, .Rprofile configuration options, generated output structure, and troubleshooting, see Creating Quarto Blog Posts with qpost.

Adding COinS metadata with add_coins()

With COinS, you provide metadata from your blog posts to software tools like bibliography managers, enabling automatic retrieval and making it easier to cite your articles correctly.

Once a post is written, run:

add_coins()

on the currently open post to append a hidden COinS <span> at the end of the post. Zotero and similar tools detect this span and automatically fill in the title, author, date, and other citation details when saving your post to a library.

For an explanation of what COinS is, why it matters, and how to configure auto-resolution of metadata fields, see Adding COinS Metadata for Zotero.

Next Steps