Shiny Golem How to Start Your Adventure Simple Guide Today

Alright folks, let me walk you through my whole Shiny Golem journey this morning. Felt like diving headfirst into something new, totally green.

Just Downloading and Installing Stuff

First thing, opened up my laptop, ya know, just a normal Thursday. Went straight to the official page they mentioned. Didn’t even know what I was clicking – just followed whatever big button said “Download”. Took ages, felt like watching paint dry. Finally done, hit install. Kept clicking “Next” like a robot, didn’t bother reading anything. Hope I didn’t agree to send my firstborn somewhere.

Open Stuff and Instantly Confused

Found the icon on my desktop later – some weird crystal robot thing. Double-clicked. Poof! Windows Defender throws a fit. “Ooh danger!” it screams. Panic mode! Looked around, decided to click “More Info” way at the bottom, then hunted for the tiny “Run Anyway” button they hide. Felt like defusing a bomb.

Finally opens… and it’s just a big blank window with a menu. Menu says “Project”. Clicked it. More options: “New Project”. Okay, sounds right. “Shiny Golem Project”. Clicked that one.

Next screen hits me – project name. Stared blankly at the ceiling for a solid minute. Named it “MyMessyProject”. Folder location? Default was okay. Didn’t touch a thing. Clicked “Create”. Boom! Stuff starts happening in the console thing at the bottom. Scary words flying past! Prayed it wouldn’t crash. Didn’t breathe until it stopped.

The “Guide” Wasn’t Guiding

Alright, it opened. Looked complicated. Side bar has “DEV”, “SH”, buncha random letters. Found their “Getting Started” popup. Read it. Said “just go to your_module.R and add functions.”

Clicked on “01_dev.R”. Saw “Start With Module Part”. Copied one line, something about golem::create_module(name = "my_first_module"). Pasted it at the bottom. Hit run. Keyboard mash: CTRL+ENTER.

Totally stuck. Nothing happened. Cursor just blinked at me. Tried restarting the whole program. Came back… still nothing. Felt stupid.

Playing Detective in the Terminal

Saw the terminal thing. Scrolled way up through the ancient history of messages. Spotted an error: “ERROR: The file ‘dev/01_start.R’ does not contain code that triggers the golem creation.” Oh. So I was running the wrong file? Duh. Closed everything.

Restarted the project. This time, went straight to “dev/run_dev.R”. Clicked it. Big red “Run App” button in RStudio. Slammed it. More scary messages… then it popped! A browser window opened showing a boring empty app with a sidebar. Small win!

Okay, guide said modify “R/app_config.R”. Opened that file. Changed the browser title from “golexample” to “My Shiny Thing”. Saved. Looked back at the browser. Hit refresh. Boom! Title changed! Simple magic.

Added My First Button (Sort Of)

Time to add something. Remembered “R/mod_my_first_module.R”. Found it. Saw placeholders: mod_my_first_module_ui and mod_my_first_module_server. Started typing inside the server part. Added some junk like:

output$distPlot <- renderPlot({
hist(rnorm(100))

Saved it. Went back to the app UI part, “R/app_ui.R”. Hunted down the menu item for “My First Module”. Inside its tabPanel, added one line:
plotOutput("distPlot")

Saved everything. Eyes glued to the running app. Hit the “My First Module” tab… Blue spinning wheel of death! Error message: “object ‘hist’ not found”. Grrrrrrr! Took me five minutes to realize I typed “hist” and R wanted “hist” but loaded base graphics? Needed hist() from base stats. Forced myself to type slower.

Changed “hist” to “hist”. Saved. Checked the app tab again. Spinner… spinner… Then a beautiful, ugly histogram of 100 random dots appeared! Almost cried. Success felt grimy and earned.

Final Thoughts

So, my shiny golem is born. Ugly baby, but mine. Getting started? Just dive in. It will break.

• Install is mostly clicking “Next”.
• Run run_dev.R first, ignore everything else at the beginning.
• Be careful where you paste code.
• Expect red angry text in the console – learn to read it.
• Simple changes in app_config.R feel good quick.

Golem gives you a big messy toolbox. Don’t try to understand every wrench on day one. Just start banging pieces together until something lights up. Messy is totally okay.