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Configuring a publishing source for your GitHub Pages site

In this article

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. 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.

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

  5. Under "GitHub Pages", use the branch dropdown menu and select a publishing source. Screenshot of Pages settings in a GitHub repository. A menu to select a branch for a publishing source, labeled "None," is outlined in dark orange.

  6. Optionally, use the folder dropdown menu to select a folder for your publishing source. Screenshot of Pages settings in a GitHub repository. A menu to select a folder for a publishing source, labeled "/(root)," is outlined in dark orange.

  7. Click Save.

Troubleshooting publishing from a branch

Note: If your repository contains symbolic links, you will need to publish your site using a GitHub Actions workflow. For more information about GitHub Actions, see "GitHub Actions documentation."

Notes:

  • If 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.

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."