Creating a GitHub Pages site with Jekyll

You can use Jekyll to create a GitHub Pages site in a new or existing repository.

Who can use this feature?

People with admin permissions for a repository can create a GitHub Pages site with Jekyll.

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. For more information, see GitHub’s plans.

GitHub Pages now uses GitHub Actions to execute the Jekyll build. When using a branch as the source of your build, GitHub Actions must be enabled in your repository if you want to use the built-in Jekyll workflow. Alternatively, if GitHub Actions is unavailable or disabled, adding a .nojekyll file to the root of your source branch will bypass the Jekyll build process and deploy the content directly. For more information on enabling GitHub Actions, see Managing GitHub Actions settings for a repository.

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Note

Organization owners can restrict the publication of GitHub Pages sites from repositories owned by the organization. For more information, see "Managing the publication of GitHub Pages sites for your organization."

Prerequisites

Before you can use Jekyll to create a GitHub Pages site, you must install Jekyll and Git. For more information, see Installation in the Jekyll documentation and Set up Git.

We recommend using Bundler to install and run Jekyll. Bundler manages Ruby gem dependencies, reduces Jekyll build errors, and prevents environment-related bugs. To install Bundler:

  1. Install Ruby. For more information, see "Installing Ruby" in the Ruby documentation.
  2. Install Bundler. For more information, see "Bundler."

Tip

If you see a Ruby error when you try to install Jekyll using Bundler, you may need to use a package manager, such as RVM or Homebrew, to manage your Ruby installation. For more information, see "Troubleshooting" in the Jekyll documentation.

Creating a repository for your site

You can either create a repository or choose an existing repository for your site.

If you want to create a GitHub Pages site for a repository where not all of the files in the repository are related to the site, you will be able to configure a publishing source for your site. For example, you can have a dedicated branch and folder to hold your site source files, or you can use a custom GitHub Actions workflow to build and deploy your site source files.

If the account that owns the repository uses GitHub Free or GitHub Free for organizations, the repository must be public.

If you want to create a site in an existing repository, skip to the "Creating your site" section.

  1. In the upper-right corner of any page, select , then click New repository.

    Screenshot of a GitHub dropdown menu showing options to create new items. The menu item "New repository" is outlined in dark orange.

  2. Use the Owner dropdown menu to select the account you want to own the repository.

    Screenshot of the owner menu for a new GitHub repository. The menu shows two options, octocat and github.

    Note

    If you're a managed user account, you can only publish GitHub Pages sites from repositories owned by organizations. For more information, see "About GitHub Pages."

  3. Type a name for your repository and an optional description. If you're creating a user or organization site, your repository must be named <user>.github.io or <organization>.github.io. If your user or organization name contains uppercase letters, you must lowercase the letters. For more information, see "About GitHub Pages."

    Screenshot of GitHub Pages settings in a repository. The repository name field contains the text "octocat.github.io" and is outlined in dark orange.

  4. Choose a repository visibility. For more information, see About repositories.

Creating your site

Before you can create your site, you must have a repository for your site on GitHub Enterprise Cloud. If you're not creating your site in an existing repository, see "Creating a repository for your site."

Warning

Unless your enterprise uses Enterprise Managed Users, GitHub Pages sites are publicly available on the internet by default, even if the repository for the site is private or internal. You can publish a site privately by managing access control for the site. Otherwise, if you have sensitive data in your site's repository, you may want to remove the data before publishing. For more information, see "About repositories" and "Changing the visibility of your GitHub Pages site."

  1. Open TerminalTerminalGit Bash.

  2. If you don't already have a local copy of your repository, navigate to the location where you want to store your site's source files, replacing PARENT-FOLDER with the folder you want to contain the folder for your repository.

    cd PARENT-FOLDER

  3. If you haven't already, initialize a local Git repository, replacing REPOSITORY-NAME with the name of your repository.

    $ git init REPOSITORY-NAME
> Initialized empty Git repository in /REPOSITORY-NAME/.git/
# Creates a new folder on your computer, initialized as a Git repository

  4. Change directories to the repository.

    $ cd REPOSITORY-NAME
# Changes the working directory

  5. Decide which publishing source you want to use. For more information, see "Configuring a publishing source for your GitHub Pages site."

  6. Navigate to the publishing source for your site. For more information, see "Configuring a publishing source for your GitHub Pages site." For example, if you chose to publish your site from the docs folder on the default branch, create and change directories to the docs folder.

    $ mkdir docs
# Creates a new folder called docs
$ cd docs

    If you chose to publish your site from the gh-pages branch, create and checkout the gh-pages branch.

    $ git checkout --orphan gh-pages
# Creates a new branch, with no history or contents, called gh-pages, and switches to the gh-pages branch
$ git rm -rf .
# Removes the contents from your default branch from the working directory

  7. To create a new Jekyll site, use the jekyll new command in your repository's root directory:

    $ jekyll new --skip-bundle .
# Creates a Jekyll site in the current directory

  8. Open the Gemfile that Jekyll created.

  9. Add "#" to the beginning of the line that starts with gem "jekyll" to comment out this line.

  10. Add the github-pages gem by editing the line starting with # gem "github-pages". Change this line to:

    gem "github-pages", "~> GITHUB-PAGES-VERSION", group: :jekyll_plugins

    Replace GITHUB-PAGES-VERSION with the latest supported version of the github-pages gem. You can find this version here: Dependency versions.

    The correct version Jekyll will be installed as a dependency of the github-pages gem.

  11. Save and close the Gemfile.

  12. From the command line, run bundle install.

  13. Open the .gitignore file that Jekyll created and ignore the gems lock file by adding this line:

    Gemfile.lock

  14. Optionally, make any necessary edits to the _config.yml file. This is required for relative paths when the repository is hosted in a subdirectory. For more information, see Splitting a subfolder out into a new repository.

    domain: my-site.github.io       # if you want to force HTTPS, specify the domain without the http at the start, e.g. example.com
url: https://my-site.github.io  # the base hostname and protocol for your site, e.g. http://example.com
baseurl: /REPOSITORY-NAME/      # place folder name if the site is served in a subfolder

  15. Optionally, test your site locally. For more information, see Testing your GitHub Pages site locally with Jekyll.

  16. Add and commit your work.

    git add .
git commit -m 'Initial GitHub pages site with Jekyll'

  17. Add your repository on GitHub.com as a remote, replacing USER with the account that owns the repository and REPOSITORY with the name of the repository.

    
$ git remote add origin https://github.com/USER/REPOSITORY.git

  18. Push the repository to GitHub Enterprise Cloud, replacing BRANCH with the name of the branch you're working on.

    git push -u origin BRANCH

  19. Configure your publishing source. For more information, see "Configuring a publishing source for your GitHub Pages site."

  20. On GitHub Enterprise Cloud, navigate to your site's repository.

  21. Under your repository name, click Settings. If you cannot see the "Settings" tab, select the dropdown menu, then click Settings.

    Screenshot of a repository header showing the tabs. The "Settings" tab is highlighted by a dark orange outline.

  22. In the "Code and automation" section of the sidebar, click Pages.

  23. Optionally, if you're publishing a project site from a private or internal repository, choose the visibility for your site. Under "GitHub Pages", select the visibility dropdown menu, then select public or private.

    Screenshot of Pages settings in a GitHub repository. A menu to select private or public visibility of the Pages site, labeled "Private," is outlined in dark orange.

    Note

    To publish a GitHub Pages site privately, your organization must use GitHub Enterprise Cloud. For more information about how you can try GitHub Enterprise Cloud for free, see Setting up a trial of GitHub Enterprise Cloud.

  24. To see your published site, under "GitHub Pages", click Visit site.

    Screenshot of a confirmation message for GitHub Pages listing the site's URL. To the right of the URL, a button labeled "Visit site" is outlined in dark orange.

    Note

    It can take up to 10 minutes for changes to your site to publish after you push the changes to GitHub Enterprise Cloud. If you don't see your GitHub Pages site changes reflected in your browser after an hour, see "About Jekyll build errors for GitHub Pages sites."

  25. Your GitHub Pages site is built and deployed with a GitHub Actions workflow. For more information, see "Viewing workflow run history".

    Note

    GitHub Actions is free for public repositories. Usage charges apply for private and internal repositories that go beyond the monthly allotment of free minutes. For more information, see "Usage limits, billing, and administration".

Note

  • If you are publishing from a branch and your site has not published automatically, make sure someone with admin permissions and a verified email address has pushed to the publishing source.
  • Commits pushed by a GitHub Actions workflow that uses the GITHUB_TOKEN do not trigger a GitHub Pages build.

Next steps

To add a new page or post to your site, see Adding content to your GitHub Pages site using Jekyll.

You can add a Jekyll theme to your GitHub Pages site to customize the look and feel of your site. For more information, see Adding a theme to your GitHub Pages site using Jekyll.