HOSTING AND DEPLOYMENT

Host on GitHub Pages

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 and automating development workflows and build with GitHub Actions.

Prerequisites

  1. Create a GitHub account
  2. Install Git
  3. Create a Hugo site and test it locally with hugo server.

Types of sites

There are three types of GitHub Pages sites: project, user, and organization. Project sites are connected to a specific project hosted on GitHub. User and organization sites are connected to a specific account on GitHub.com.

Procedure

Step 1
Create a GitHub repository.
Step 2
Push your local repository to GitHub.
Step 3
Visit your GitHub repository. From the main menu choose Settings > Pages. In the center of your screen you will see this:

screen capture

Step 4
Change the Source to GitHub Actions. The change is immediate; you do not have to press a Save button.

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Step 5
Create an empty file in your local repository.
.github/workflows/hugo.yaml
Step 6
Copy and paste the YAML below into the file you created. Change the branch name and Hugo version as needed.
.github/workflows/hugo.yaml
# Sample workflow for building and deploying a Hugo site to GitHub Pages
name: Deploy Hugo site to Pages

on:
  # Runs on pushes targeting the default branch
  push:
    branches:
      - main

  # Allows you to run this workflow manually from the Actions tab
  workflow_dispatch:

# Sets permissions of the GITHUB_TOKEN to allow deployment to GitHub Pages
permissions:
  contents: read
  pages: write
  id-token: write

# Allow only one concurrent deployment, skipping runs queued between the run in-progress and latest queued.
# However, do NOT cancel in-progress runs as we want to allow these production deployments to complete.
concurrency:
  group: "pages"
  cancel-in-progress: false

# Default to bash
defaults:
  run:
    shell: bash

jobs:
  # Build job
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    env:
      HUGO_VERSION: 0.120.4
    steps:
      - name: Install Hugo CLI
        run: |
          wget -O ${{ runner.temp }}/hugo.deb https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/releases/download/v${HUGO_VERSION}/hugo_extended_${HUGO_VERSION}_linux-amd64.deb \
          && sudo dpkg -i ${{ runner.temp }}/hugo.deb          
      - name: Install Dart Sass
        run: sudo snap install dart-sass
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          submodules: recursive
          fetch-depth: 0
      - name: Setup Pages
        id: pages
        uses: actions/configure-pages@v4
      - name: Install Node.js dependencies
        run: "[[ -f package-lock.json || -f npm-shrinkwrap.json ]] && npm ci || true"
      - name: Build with Hugo
        env:
          # For maximum backward compatibility with Hugo modules
          HUGO_ENVIRONMENT: production
          HUGO_ENV: production
        run: |
          hugo \
            --gc \
            --minify \
            --baseURL "${{ steps.pages.outputs.base_url }}/"          
      - name: Upload artifact
        uses: actions/upload-pages-artifact@v2
        with:
          path: ./public

  # Deployment job
  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@v3
Step 7
Commit the change to your local repository with a commit message of something like “Add workflow”, and push to GitHub.
Step 8
From GitHub’s main menu, choose Actions. You will see something like this:

screen capture

Step 9
When GitHub has finished building and deploying your site, the color of the status indicator will change to green.

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Step 10
Click on the commit message as shown above. You will see this:

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Under the deploy step, you will see a link to your live site.

In the future, whenever you push a change from your local repository, GitHub will rebuild your site and deploy the changes.

Customize the workflow

The example workflow above includes this step, which typically takes 10‑15 seconds:

- name: Install Dart Sass
  run: sudo snap install dart-sass

You may remove this step if your site, themes, and modules do not transpile Sass to CSS using the Dart Sass transpiler.

Additional resources

See also

Last updated: December 4, 2023: Update GitHub hosting workflow example (0c31a4b4)
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