Creating a GitHub Pages site

Creating a repository for your site

If your site is an independent project, you can create a new repository to store your site's source code. If your site is associated with an existing project, you can add the source code for your site to a gh-pages branch or a docs folder on the master branch in that project's repository. For example, if you're creating a site to publish documentation for a project that's already on GitHub Enterprise Server, you may want to store the source code for the site in the same repository as the project.

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, use the drop-down menu, and select New repository.
2. Use the Owner drop-down menu, and select the account you want to own the repository.
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."
4. Choose a repository visibility. For more information, see "About repositories."
5. Select Initialize this repository with a README.
6. Click Create repository.

Creating your site

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

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

2. If you're creating a project site, decide which publishing source you want to use. If you're creating a user or organization site, you must store your site's source code on the master branch. For more information, see "About GitHub Pages."

3. If your chosen publishing source already exists, navigate to the publishing source. If your chosen publishing source doesn't exist, create the publishing source.

4. In the root of the publishing source, create a new file called index.md that contains the content you want to display on the main page of your site.

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

6. Under your repository name, click Settings.

7. To see your published site, under "GitHub Pages", click your site's URL.

   Note: It can take up to 20 minutes for changes to your site to publish after you push the changes to GitHub Enterprise Server. If your don't see your changes reflected in your browser after an hour, see "About Jekyll build errors for GitHub Pages sites."

Next steps

You can add more pages to your site by creating more new files. Each file will be available on your site in the same directory structure as your publishing source. For example, if the publishing source for your project site is the gh-pages branch, and you create a new file called /about/contact-us.md on the gh-pages branch, the file will be available at http(s)://<hostname>/pages/<username>/<repository>/about/contact-us.html.

You can also add a theme to customize your site’s look and feel. For more information, see "Adding a theme to your GitHub Pages site using Jekyll."

To customize your site even more, you can use Jekyll, a static site generator with built-in support for GitHub Pages. For more information, see "About GitHub Pages and Jekyll."

Further reading

• "Troubleshooting Jekyll build errors for GitHub Pages sites"
• "Creating and deleting branches within your repository"
• "Creating new files"