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This version of GitHub Enterprise was discontinued on 2023-01-18. No patch releases will be made, even for critical security issues. For better performance, improved security, and new features, upgrade to the latest version of GitHub Enterprise. For help with the upgrade, contact GitHub Enterprise support.

Configuring a publishing source for your GitHub Pages site

If you use the default publishing source for your GitHub Pages site, your site will publish automatically. You can also choose to publish your site from a different branch or folder.

Who can use this feature

People with admin or maintainer permissions for a repository can configure a publishing source for a GitHub Pages site.

GitHub Pages is available in public repositories with GitHub Free and GitHub Free for organizations, and in public and private repositories with GitHub Pro, GitHub Team, GitHub Enterprise Cloud, and GitHub Enterprise Server.

About publishing sources

Your GitHub Pages site will publish whenever changes are pushed to a specific branch. You can specify which branch and folder to use as your publishing source. The source branch can be any branch in your repository, and the source folder can either be the root of the repository (/) on the source branch or a /docs folder on the source branch. Whenever changes are pushed to the source branch, the changes in the source folder will be published to your GitHub Pages site.

Warning: If your site administrator has enabled Public Pages, GitHub Pages sites are publicly available on the internet, even if the repository for the site is private or internal. If you have sensitive data in your site's repository, you may want to remove the data before publishing. For more information, see "Configuring GitHub Pages for your enterprise" and "About repositories."

Publishing from a branch

  1. Make sure the branch you want to use as your publishing source already exists in your repository.

  2. On GitHub Enterprise Server, navigate to your site's repository.

  3. Under your repository name, click Settings. Repository settings button

  4. In the left sidebar, click Pages. Page tab in the left-hand sidebar

  5. Under "GitHub Pages", use the None or Branch drop-down menu and select a publishing source. Drop-down menu to select a publishing source

  6. Optionally, use the drop-down menu to select a folder for your publishing source. Drop-down menu to select a folder for publishing source

  7. Click Save. Button to save changes to publishing source settings

Troubleshooting publishing from a branch

Note: If your site has not published automatically, make sure someone with admin permissions and a verified email address has pushed to the publishing source.

If you choose the docs folder on any branch as your publishing source, then later remove the /docs folder from that branch in your repository, your site won't build and you'll get a page build error message for a missing /docs folder. For more information, see "Troubleshooting Jekyll build errors for GitHub Pages sites."