For me, the preview still works with the described procedure (e.g. from the parent of the extracted tutorial...). Also, localhost is synonymous to 127.0.0.1, and not to 0.0.0.0 (see here).
We should briefly re-attempt this together, @florisvdh, to investigate what caused the unexpected behavior.

@florisvdh See issue #343. It seems the situation hasn't changed since I wrote this, so I don't know how to deal with it. (I don't have any knowledge of this kind of tools, I used to just follow the provided instructions.)

Thanks @ElsLommelen; yeah I saw the same about Chrome OS from Chromium, so it's the same in Chrome then. Good that you made the issue.

Also, localhost is synonymous to 127.0.0.1, and not to 0.0.0.0 (see here)

@falkmielke yes of course, and I first tried that (as in the instructions), but there the CSS was not found (as seen from the console errors) so the website rendered without CSS: this is not the served path. However then I looked better at below output: it literally points to 0.0.0.0 and indeed that did work. But the website only works well if run it in the root of the tutorials site, not from the parent directory as prescribed (hence my changes).

$ python -m http.server 8887
Serving HTTP on 0.0.0.0 port 8887 (http://0.0.0.0:8887/) ...

So this is puzzling (it used to work before, the way you describe it). After reading some of the docs at https://docs.python.org/3/library/http.server.html (no docs available locally?), I tried:

$ python -m http.server --bind 127.0.0.1 8887
Serving HTTP on 127.0.0.1 port 8887 (http://127.0.0.1:8887/) ...

That works; for me this is required to use localhost. Using python 3.10. The --bind feature is there since 3.4.

Still it only works for all subpages (like 'categories', 'installation +' etc) when run directly from the tutorials directory, not from the parent directory.

Would it be due to some sys config in Linux Mint 21.3, since I'm using the system's python here?

So I tried in an 'isolated' environment (actually this is just by controlling PATH as far as I understand conda, so not sure if this provides enough isolation). Same result though.

$ conda activate floris
(floris) $ which python
/home/floris/miniconda3/envs/floris/bin/python
(floris) $ python --version
Python 3.11.9
(floris) $ python -m http.server 8887
Serving HTTP on 0.0.0.0 port 8887 (http://0.0.0.0:8887/) ...

More isolation, still the same:

$ docker run -it -v .:/website/tutorials -p 8887:8887 rocker/tidyverse bash
root@56ac6c351a97:/# which python
root@56ac6c351a97:/# which python3
/usr/bin/python3
root@56ac6c351a97:/# ls website/tutorials/
404.html  assets   categories  create_tutorial  favicon-32x32.png  favicon.png  images      index.xml     js                  rmarkdown-libs  search       tags
articles  authors  code        css              favicon.ico        html         index.html  installation  list_of_categories  robots.txt      sitemap.xml  tutorials
root@56ac6c351a97:/# cd website/
root@56ac6c351a97:/website# python3 -m http.server 8887
Serving HTTP on 0.0.0.0 port 8887 (http://0.0.0.0:8887/) ...
172.17.0.1 - - [10/Feb/2025 20:09:08] code 404, message File not found
172.17.0.1 - - [10/Feb/2025 20:09:08] "GET /create_tutorial/ HTTP/1.1" 404 -
172.17.0.1 - - [10/Feb/2025 20:09:11] code 404, message File not found
172.17.0.1 - - [10/Feb/2025 20:09:11] "GET /create_tutorial/ HTTP/1.1" 404 -
172.17.0.1 - - [10/Feb/2025 20:09:13] code 404, message File not found
172.17.0.1 - - [10/Feb/2025 20:09:13] "GET /categories/ HTTP/1.1" 404 -
^C
Keyboard interrupt received, exiting.
root@56ac6c351a97:/website# cd tutorials/
root@56ac6c351a97:/website/tutorials# python3 -m http.server 8887
Serving HTTP on 0.0.0.0 port 8887 (http://0.0.0.0:8887/) ...
172.17.0.1 - - [10/Feb/2025 20:09:30] "GET /create_tutorial/ HTTP/1.1" 200 -
172.17.0.1 - - [10/Feb/2025 20:09:30] "GET /create_tutorial/images/new_file.png HTTP/1.1" 200 -
172.17.0.1 - - [10/Feb/2025 20:09:30] "GET /create_tutorial/images/folder_file_name.png HTTP/1.1" 200 -
172.17.0.1 - - [10/Feb/2025 20:09:30] "GET /create_tutorial/images/knit_md.png HTTP/1.1" 200 -
172.17.0.1 - - [10/Feb/2025 20:09:30] "GET /create_tutorial/images/propose_file.png HTTP/1.1" 200 -
172.17.0.1 - - [10/Feb/2025 20:09:32] "GET /categories/ HTTP/1.1" 200 -

And it's only when running from the tutorials site root (second try above in docker) that all subpages work well (e.g. 'create tutorial' / 'categories' doesn't when running from parent directory).

But, if it works for you, then we may not want to change it.

I found out that this worked for me because I had accidentally unpacked the tutorials website into top level of my messy Download folder. Sorry!

I got this to work with another keyword to python::http.server: --directory.
Assuming the zip is unzipped into a subfolder ./tutorials:

python -m http.server 8887 --bind localhost --directory tutorials

I suggest to document the whole command to make it safe.

My fullly repetitive one-line linux pipeline now is

rm -rf tutorials_website && unzip pr-<*>-inbo-tutorials-website.zip -d tutorials_website && python -m http.server 8887 --bind localhost --directory tutorials_website

(you have to replace the <*> per PR)

Finally, to see python docs for http.server locally, try pydoc http.server or to search: pydoc -k http.server.
(via)

I will try to find an alternative for the chrome web app on the other issue.

@florisvdh mind if I take over this PR to adjust the documentation to use servr?

Thanks for the research @falkmielke !

Finally, to see python docs for http.server locally, try pydoc http.server or to search: pydoc -k http.server.
(via)

Thanks for the hint! Out-of-the-box I had to use pydoc3, but indeed it's there!

@florisvdh mind if I take over this PR to adjust the documentation to use servr?

I'd be delighted, great that you found an R solution! I have a lot of trust in packages by the author of {rmarkdown}, {bookdown}, {knitr} etc. 🙂

So you're welcome to take over update_pr_template from me.

closes #343

@florisvdh I have re-read and adjusted the relevant files and would appreciate your comments in turn. (the PR is yours, so I cannot involve you as a reviewer)