The repository contains a Python script control-panel.py that creates a dashboard for inspecting and changing the copy of the website that's stored in your copy of the repository. This is useful only for developers while doing development, because anyone else who wants to know the contents of the repository is better off viewing the actual published website. But the control panel shows you the results of your local changes before you publish them, so you can preview them. Plus, it also lets you create new tasks and solutions, rebuild the site, and more.

I'll assume you're using VS Code, which I recommend, but if you're not, skip to the end of this page for command-line instructions. In VS Code, do this:

1. Press Ctrl+Shift+P (or on Mac, Command+Shift+P) to see a list of all VS Code commands.
2. Type "tasks" to find just the task-related commands
3. Choose the command entitled "Tasks: Run Task."
4. From the menu it brings up, choose the task entitled "Open control panel," as shown below.

5. This will open a terminal and it will take a moment to finish launching the control panel, but will eventually tell you that you can view the control panel in your browser, as shown below.
6. Hover over the link it gives you and it will tell you to Ctrl+Click (or Command+Click on Mac) to visit that site. Do so.

7. The control panel will open in your browser, as shown below.

The control panel is a web application that is running and being viewed on your own computer (that is, it is not a website from the internet, but just from your own PC). It contains tools for browsing, previewing, and changing content in your own copy of the How to Data website, in the repository you've cloned from GitHub.

Any changes you make in that repository you can then propose to the site owner for inclusion in the actual site online, as documented elsewhere in this wiki.

You can run the control panel from the command line, if you're in the repository folder. You will need Streamlit installed. The command you need to run appears in the tasks.json file in this repostiory; see the command associated with "Open control panel."

The control panel has three tabs, and each is documented separately.

• Tab 1: Browse reports
• Tab 2: View/edit tasks and solutions
• Tab 3: Build the site