Host on GitHub

GitHub provides free and fast static hosting over SSL for personal, organization, or project pages directly from a GitHub repository via its GitHub Pages service.

Assumptions

1. You have Git 2.5 or greater installed on your machine.
2. You have a GitHub account. Signing up for GitHub is free.
3. You have a ready-to-publish Hugo website or have at least completed the Quick Start.

If you are working within an Organization account or want to set up a User website on GitHub and would like more information, refer to the GitHub Pages documentation.

Deployment via /docs Folder on Master Branch

As described in the GitHub Pages documentation, you can deploy from a folder called docs/ on your master branch. To effectively use this feature with Hugo, you need to change the Hugo publish directory in your site’s config.toml and config.yaml, respectively:

publishDir: docs

publishDir = "docs"

After running hugo, push your master branch to the remote repository and choose the docs/ folder as the website source of your repo. Do the following from within your GitHub project:

1. Go to Settings → GitHub Pages
2. From Source, select “master branch /docs folder”. If the option isn’t enabled, you likely do not have a docs/ folder in the root of your project.

Deployment From Your gh-pages Branch

You can also tell GitHub pages to treat your master branch as the published site or point to a separate gh-pages branch. The latter approach is a bit more complex but has some advantages:

• It keeps your source and generated website in different branches and therefore maintains version control history for both.
• Unlike the preceding docs/ option, it uses the default public folder.

Preparations for gh-pages Branch

These steps only need to be done once. Replace upstream with the name of your remote; e.g., origin:

Add the Public Folder

First, add the public folder to your .gitignore file at the project root so that the directory is ignored on the master branch:

echo "public" >> .gitignore

Initialize Your gh-pages Branch

You can now initialize your gh-pages branch as an empty orphan branch:

git checkout --orphan gh-pages
git reset --hard
git commit --allow-empty -m "Initializing gh-pages branch"
git push upstream gh-pages
git checkout master

Build and Deployment

Now check out the gh-pages branch into your public folder using git’s worktree feature. Essentially, the worktree allows you to have multiple branches of the same local repository to be checked out in different directories:

rm -rf public
git worktree add -B gh-pages public upstream/gh-pages

Regenerate the site using the hugo command and commit the generated files on the gh-pages branch:

hugo
cd public && git add --all && git commit -m "Publishing to gh-pages" && cd ..

If the changes in your local gh-pages branch look alright, push them to the remote repo:

git push upstream gh-pages

Set gh-pages as Your Publish Branch

In order to use your gh-pages branch as your publishing branch, you’ll need to configure the repository within the GitHub UI. This will likely happen automatically once GitHub realizes you’ve created this branch. You can also set the branch manually from within your GitHub project:

1. Go to Settings → GitHub Pages
2. From Source, select “gh-pages branch” and then Save. If the option isn’t enabled, you likely have not created the branch yet OR you have not pushed the branch from your local machine to the hosted repository on GitHub.

After a short while, you’ll see the updated contents on your GitHub Pages site.

Put it Into a Script

To automate these steps, you can create a script with the following contents:

#!/bin/sh

DIR=$(dirname "$0")

cd $DIR/..

if [[ $(git status -s) ]]
then
    echo "The working directory is dirty. Please commit any pending changes."
    exit 1;
fi

echo "Deleting old publication"
rm -rf public
mkdir public
git worktree prune
rm -rf .git/worktrees/public/

echo "Checking out gh-pages branch into public"
git worktree add -B gh-pages public upstream/gh-pages

echo "Removing existing files"
rm -rf public/*

echo "Generating site"
hugo

echo "Updating gh-pages branch"
cd public && git add --all && git commit -m "Publishing to gh-pages (publish.sh)"

This will abort if there are pending changes in the working directory and also makes sure that all previously existing output files are removed. Adjust the script to taste, e.g. to include the final push to the remote repository if you don’t need to take a look at the gh-pages branch before pushing. Or adding echo yourdomainname.com >> CNAME if you set up for your gh-pages to use customize domain.

Deployment From Your master Branch

To use master as your publishing branch, you’ll need your rendered website to live at the root of the GitHub repository. Steps should be similar to that of the gh-pages branch, with the exception that you will create your GitHub repository with the public directory as the root. Note that this does not provide the same benefits of the gh-pages branch in keeping your source and output in separate, but version controlled, branches within the same repo.

You will also need to set master as your publishable branch from within the GitHub UI:

1. Go to Settings → GitHub Pages
2. From Source, select “master branch” and then Save.

Host GitHub User or Organization Pages

As mentioned in this GitHub Help article, you can host a user/organization page in addition to project pages. Here are the key differences in GitHub Pages websites for Users and Organizations:

1. You must use the <USERNAME>.github.io naming scheme for your GitHub repo.
2. Content from the master branch will be used to publish your GitHub Pages site.

It becomes much simpler in this case: we’ll create two separate repos, one for Hugo’s content, and a git submodule with the public folder’s content in it.

Step-by-step Instructions

1. Create a <YOUR-PROJECT> git repository on GitHub. This repository will contain Hugo’s content and other source files.
2. Create a <USERNAME>.github.io GitHub repository. This is the repository that will contain the fully rendered version of your Hugo website.
3. git clone <YOUR-PROJECT-URL> && cd <YOUR-PROJECT>
4. Make your website work locally (hugo server or hugo server -t <YOURTHEME>) and open your browser to http://localhost:1313.
5. Once you are happy with the results:
   • Press Ctrl+C to kill the server
   • rm -rf public to completely remove the public directory if there
6. git submodule add -b master git@github.com:<USERNAME>/<USERNAME>.github.io.git public. This creates a git submodule. Now when you run the hugo command to build your site to public, the created public directory will have a different remote origin (i.e. hosted GitHub repository). You can automate some of these steps with the following script.

Put it Into a Script

You’re almost done. You can also add a deploy.sh script to automate the preceding steps for you. You can also make it executable with chmod +x deploy.sh.

The following are the contents of the deploy.sh script:

#!/bin/bash

echo -e "\033[0;32mDeploying updates to GitHub...\033[0m"

# Build the project.
hugo # if using a theme, replace with `hugo -t <YOURTHEME>`

# Go To Public folder
cd public
# Add changes to git.
git add .

# Commit changes.
msg="rebuilding site `date`"
if [ $# -eq 1 ]
  then msg="$1"
fi
git commit -m "$msg"

# Push source and build repos.
git push origin master

# Come Back up to the Project Root
cd ..

You can then run ./deploy.sh "Your optional commit message" to send changes to <USERNAME>.github.io. Note that you likely will want to commit changes to your <YOUR-PROJECT> repository as well.

That’s it! Your personal page should be up and running at https://yourusername.github.io within a couple minutes.

Use a Custom Domain

If you’d like to use a custom domain for your GitHub Pages site, create a file static/CNAME. Your custom domain name should be the only contents inside CNAME. Since it’s inside static, the published site will contain the CNAME file at the root of the published site, which is a requirements of GitHub Pages.

Refer to the official documentation for custom domains for further information.