Deploying and Hosting a Shiny App on shinyapps.io: A Complete Guide

You have a free tool at your fingertips to share your web dev work.

Shiny development makes your web apps interactive and informative.

Shiny, an R package that makes it easy to build interactive web applications straight from R, has revolutionized data visualization and analysis. While developing a Shiny app locally is straightforward, deploying it for wider accessibility requires a hosting solution. shinyapps.io, provided by Posit, is a popular platform designed specifically for this purpose, offering a seamless experience for deploying and managing Shiny applications. It is especially good for beginners or managing the Shiny apps in your portfolio or on select websites.

This guide walks you through deploying and hosting a Shiny app on shinyapps.io, covering the process from initial setup to advanced considerations.

1. Setting Up Your Environment:

Before deploying, ensure you have the following in place:

• R and R-Studio: Install the latest versions of R and R-Studio, the integrated development environment (IDE) for R.
• Shiny Package: Install the shiny package using install.packages("shiny").
• rsconnect Package: Install the rsconnect package with install.packages("rsconnect"). This package facilitates the deployment process to shinyapps.io.