GitHub Pages now uses customizable GitHub Action workflows to build and deploy your code so that developers can control their authoring framework and deployment. GitHub Pages is a powerful option for storing static content for the following reasons:

It’s free.
It makes collaboration easy. Anyone can open a pull request to update the site.
Your repository syncs with any changes you made to your site.
While GitHub Pages comes with a default domain name like, https://YOUR_USER_NAME.github.io/ , it supports custom domains.
It uses customizable GitHub Action workflows for builds and deployments.

The team at GitHub made a few starter workflows available to you, so you don’t have to write them from scratch, and you can use them as examples to support deployments in other frameworks. Currently there are starter workflows for Next.js, Nuxt.js, Gatsby, Hugo, Jekyll, and HTML.

Let’s learn how to host static sites built with Astro or any workflow of your choice on GitHub Pages!

Please note that your repository must be public to publish your site on GitHub Pages.

After you write your code (using a framework or static generator of your choice) and store it in a repository, go to the settings tab for that repository.

Click Pages on the left sidebar

Under build and deployment, choose GitHub Actions

Create a folder at the root of your project called .github/workflows

Inside of your .github/workflows folder, create a customized workflow to deploy your specified framework to GitHub Pages (see examples in the section below):

Example workflow for Astro

name: Deploy Astro to GitHub Pages

    on:
     # Trigger the workflow every time you push to the `main` branch
      push:
        branches: [ main ]
      # Allows you to run this workflow manually from the Actions tab on GitHub.
      workflow_dispatch:

      # Allow this job to clone the repo and create a page deployment
    permissions:
      contents: read
      pages: write
      id-token: write

    jobs:
      build:
        runs-on: ubuntu-latest
        steps:
        - name: Check out your repository using git
          uses: actions/checkout@v2

        - name: Use Node.js 16
          uses: actions/setup-node@v2
          with:
            node-version: '16'
            cache: 'npm'

        # Not using npm? Change `npm ci` to `yarn install` or `pnpm i`
        - name: Install dependencies
          run: npm ci

        # Not using npm? Change `npm run build` to `yarn build` or `pnpm run build`
        - name: Build Astro
          run: npm run build --if-present

        - name: Upload artifact
          uses: actions/upload-pages-artifact@v1
          with:
            path: ./dist

      deploy:
        environment:
          name: github-pages
          url: ${{ steps.deployment.outputs.page_url }}
        runs-on: ubuntu-latest
        needs: build
        steps:
          - name: Deploy to GitHub Pages
            id: deployment
            uses: actions/deploy-pages@v1

Example workflow for React

    name: Deploy to React GitHub Pages

    on:
     # Trigger the workflow every time you push to the `main` branch
      push:
        branches: [ main ]
      # Allows you to run this workflow manually from the Actions tab on GitHub.
      workflow_dispatch:

      # Allow this job to clone the repo and create a page deployment
    permissions:
      contents: read
      pages: write
      id-token: write

    jobs:
      build:
        runs-on: ubuntu-latest
        steps:
        - name: Check out your repository using git
          uses: actions/checkout@v2

        - name: Use Node.js 16
          uses: actions/setup-node@v2
          with:
            node-version: '16'
            cache: 'npm'

        # Not using npm? Change `npm ci` to `yarn install` or `pnpm i`
        - name: Install dependencies
          run: npm ci

        # Not using npm? Change `npm run build` to `yarn build` or `pnpm run build`
        - name: Build React
          run: npm run build --if-present

        - name: Upload artifact
          uses: actions/upload-pages-artifact@v1
          with:
            path: ./build

      deploy:
        environment:
          name: github-pages
          url: ${{ steps.deployment.outputs.page_url }}
        runs-on: ubuntu-latest
        needs: build
        steps:
          - name: Deploy to GitHub Pages
            id: deployment
            uses: actions/deploy-pages@v1

Example template for any static generator of your choice

    name: Deploy to “your frameworks” GitHub Pages

    on:
     # Trigger the workflow every time you push to the `main` branch
      push:
        branches: [ main ]
      # Allows you to run this workflow manually from the Actions tab on GitHub.
      workflow_dispatch:

      # Allow this job to clone the repo and create a page deployment
    permissions:
      contents: read
      pages: write
      id-token: write

    jobs:
      build:
        runs-on: ubuntu-latest
        steps:
        - name: Check out your repository using git
          uses: actions/checkout@v2

        - name: Use “REPLACE WITH THE RUNTIME OF YOUR CHOICE”
          uses: “REPLACE WITH THE ACTION THAT SETS UP THE RUN TIME OF YOUR CHOICE”

        # Not using npm? Change `npm ci` to `yarn install` or `pnpm i`
        - name: Install dependencies
          run: “REPLACE WITH COMMANDS TO INSTALL DEPENDENCIES”

        # Not using npm? Change `npm run build` to `yarn build` or `pnpm run build`
        - name: Build “YOUR STATIC GENERATOR HERE”
          run: “REPLACE WITH YOUR BUILD COMMAND”

        - name: Upload artifact
          uses: actions/upload-pages-artifact@v1
          with:
            path: “REPLACE WITH YOUR BUILD OUTPUT FOLDER”

      deploy:
        environment:
          name: github-pages
          url: ${{ steps.deployment.outputs.page_url }}
        runs-on: ubuntu-latest
        needs: build
        steps:
          - name: Deploy to GitHub Pages
            id: deployment
            uses: actions/deploy-pages@v1

Within a few seconds, your Action will start running. It will generate a URL and deploy your static site to GitHub Pages if successful.

Head over to your URL named yourusername.github.io/your_repo_name to check out your live website!

Gotchas: handling asset paths

When I first published my site on GitHub Pages, I was confused and surprised that I couldn’t see any images or PDFs even though they were present when I locally hosted the site. This happened because GitHub Pages handles paths differently.

For example, if I have PDF living in this relative path: assets/pdfs/menu-food.pdf, then once hosted on GitHub Pages, update the new path to {“REPOSITORY NAME”}/assets/pdfs/menu-food.pdf

Example

Here's an example repository I built using this method

blackgirlbytes / blackgyalbites-astro

no touch restaurant menu template hosted on GitHub Pages

blackgyalbites

Template for No-touch Menus and Host Static Pages Built with Any Framework on GitHub Pages

Website built with Astro to display restaurant menus when users scan a QR code.

Powered By GitHub Pages

This is a demonstration to show developers that they can build and host static websites using any framework. See more example frameworks hosted on GitHub Pages:

Link to live site: https://blackgirlbytes.github.io/blackgyalbites-astro/

Design and Development

All designs and elements are open source, available for free for anyone to use.

Owned by Rizel Scarlett (@blackgirlbytes)

Illustrations by Cuoc Doi Prints

Feel free to fork, copy, tweak, and use for any purpose. This project is completely open source, and under MIT license.

Menu Design Template: Canva

Download Assets & Design Elements: Google Drive

View on GitHub

Learn more

Watch this talk delivered by Tommy Byrd on Using GitHub Pages with Actions to deploy Hugo sites in seconds
The repository and ReadMe for Deploy Pages
GitHub’s changelog announcement
Official GitHub Blog Post

Watch this awesome YouTube short by Kedasha demonstrating how to use a customized workflow to deploy a static site generator to GitHub Pages!

I'd love your thoughts on the new customized workflows to deploy to GitHub Pages. Comment below! For more content like this, follow GitHub and me on DEV!

Blog

How to deploy an Astro site to GitHub Pages

Rizèl Scarlett