Anyone with read permissions for a repository can test a GitHub Pages site locally.
Prerequisites
Before you can use Jekyll to test a site, you must:
- Install Jekyll.
- Create a Jekyll site. For more information, see "Creating a GitHub Pages site with Jekyll."
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:
- Install Ruby. For more information, see "Installing Ruby" in the Ruby documentation.
- 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.
Building your site locally
- Open TerminalTerminalGit Bash.
- Navigate to the publishing source for your site. For more information about publishing sources, see "About GitHub Pages."
- Run your Jekyll site locally.
$ bundle exec jekyll serve > Configuration file: /Users/octocat/my-site/_config.yml > Source: /Users/octocat/my-site > Destination: /Users/octocat/my-site/_site > Incremental build: disabled. Enable with --incremental > Generating... > done in 0.309 seconds. > Auto-regeneration: enabled for '/Users/octocat/my-site' > Configuration file: /Users/octocat/my-site/_config.yml > Server address: http://127.0.0.1:4000/ > Server running... press ctrl-c to stop.
- To preview your site, in your web browser, navigate to
http://localhost:4000
.
Updating the GitHub Pages gem
Jekyll is an active open source project that is updated frequently. If the github-pages
gem on your computer is out of date with the github-pages
gem on the GitHub Pages server, your site may look different when built locally than when published on GitHub Enterprise. To avoid this, regularly update the github-pages
gem on your computer.
- Open TerminalTerminalGit Bash.
- Update the
github-pages
gem.- If you installed Bundler, run
bundle update github-pages
. - If you don't have Bundler installed, run
gem update github-pages
.
- If you installed Bundler, run
Further reading
- GitHub Pages in the Jekyll documentation