Deployment on GitHub Pages

If your repo is hosted on GitHub, a simple option is to serve your site with GitHub Pages. GitHub Pages lets you create project, user, and organization sites; for a project site, your site URL will be http(s)://<username>.github.io/<repository_name>, custom domains are also supported. GitHub Pages come with continuous deployment using GitHub actions, while the marketplace for actions has useful tools for spell and link checking, deploy previews, and more. Using your existing GitHub account, you can start by using the free plan for publicly available repositories, with premium tiers available for business use cases.

The Docsy example site repo provides a workflow file that you can use when deploying to GitHub Pages. If you used the example site as template for your new site you may already have this file in your repo, if not the instructions below show you how to create your own workflow file.

Before deploying on GitHub Pages, make sure that you’ve pushed your site source to your chosen GitHub repo, following any setup instructions in Using the theme.

1. With GitHub Pages, a site is published to the branch gh-pages and served from there by default. You must create this branch first, either in the GitHub web interface or via command line (at the root of your local repo clone):

   $ git checkout -b gh-pages
   Switched to a new branch 'gh-pages'
   

2. Push this local branch to your repo:

   $ git push --set-upstream origin gh-pages
    details omitted …
    * [new branch]      new -> new
   branch 'gh-pages' set up to track 'origin/gh-pages'.
   

3. Switch back to the main (or work) branch of your repo:

   $ git checkout main
   Switched to branch 'main'
   

4. Check if you already have the workflow file .github/workflows/deploy-github-pages.yml in your repo. If this file doesn’t exist, do the following:

   1. Create a new empty workflow file from the root of your repo, as follows:

      $ mkdir -p .github/workflows
      $ touch .github/workflows/deploy-github-pages.yml
      

   2. Open the file in an editor of your choice, paste in the code below, and save the file:

      name: Deployment to GitHub Pages
      
      on:
        workflow_dispatch:
        push:
          branches:
            - main # <-- specify the branch you want to deploy from
        pull_request:
      
      env:
        REPO_NAME: ${{ github.event.repository.name }}
        REPO_OWNER: ${{ github.repository_owner }}
      
      jobs:
        deploy:
          runs-on: ubuntu-22.04
          concurrency:
            group: ${{ github.workflow }}-${{ github.ref }}
          steps:
            - uses: actions/checkout@v4
              with:
                fetch-depth: 0 # Fetch all history for .GitInfo and .Lastmod
      
            - name: Setup Hugo
              uses: peaceiris/actions-hugo@v3
              with:
                hugo-version: '0.155.3'
                extended: true
      
            - name: Setup Node
              uses: actions/setup-node@v4
              with:
                node-version: '20'
                cache: 'npm'
                cache-dependency-path: '**/package-lock.json'
      
            - run: npm ci
            - run: >-
                hugo --baseURL https://${REPO_OWNER}.github.io/${REPO_NAME}
                --minify
      
            - name: Deploy
              uses: peaceiris/actions-gh-pages@v4
              if: ${{ github.ref == 'refs/heads/main' }} # <-- specify same branch as above here
              with:
                github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
      

   3. Add the file to the staging area, commit your change and push the change to your remote GitHub repo:

      $ git add .github/workflows/deploy-github-pages.yml
      $ git commit -m "Adding workflow file for site deployment"
      $ git push origin
      

5. In your browser, make sure you are logged into your GitHub account. In your repo Settings, select Pages.

   1. Under Build and deployment, select Deploy from a branch in the source dropdown.

   2. From the branch dropdown, select gh-pages as branch where the site is built from.

   3. From the folder dropdown, select /(root) as root directory.

That’s it! Your deployment workflow for your site is configured.

Any future push to the branch specified in your workflow file will now trigger the action workflow defined in the workflow file. Additionally, you can trigger the deployment manually by using GitHub web UI.

Once you push to your repo, you can see the progress of the triggered workflow in the Actions tab of the GitHub web UI:

URL 'Repo actions': https://github.com/<username>/<repository_name>/actions

After the first successful deployment, a new environment github-pages is added to your repo. This is shown at the right of your repo main view (below Releases and Packages). When you click on this environment, a list of deployments is displayed:

URL 'Repo deployments': https://github.com/<username>/<repository_name>/deployments/

You can find out more in Hosting on GitHub in the Hugo documentation.

For advanced use cases, the hugo-action used inside the workflow file has more configuration options, which are well documented.