Publishing your site · Docusaurus

You should now have a site up and running locally. Once you have customized it to your liking, it's time to publish it. Docusaurus generates a static HTML website that is ready to be served by your favorite web server or online hosting solution.

Building Static HTML Pages

To create a static build of your website, run the following script from the website directory:

yarn run build # or `npm run build`

This will generate a build directory inside the website directory containing the .html files from all of your docs and other pages included in pages.

Hosting Static HTML Pages

At this point, you can grab all of the files inside the website/build directory and copy them over to your favorite web server's html directory.

For example, both Apache and Nginx serve content from /var/www/html by default. That said, choosing a web server or provider is outside the scope of Docusaurus.

When serving the site from your own web server, ensure the web server is serving the asset files with the proper HTTP headers. CSS files should be served with the content-type header of text/css. In the case of Nginx, this would mean setting include /etc/nginx/mime.types; in your nginx.conf file. See this issue for more info.

Using ZEIT Now

Deploying your Docusaurus project to ZEIT Now will provide you with various benefits in the areas of performance and ease of use.

Most importantly, however, deploying a Docusaurus project only takes a couple seconds:

First, install their command-line interface:

npm i -g now

Run a single command inside the root directory of your project:

now

That's all. Your docs will automatically be deployed.

Using GitHub Pages

Docusaurus was designed to work really well with one of the most popular hosting solutions for open source projects: GitHub Pages.

Deploying to GitHub Pages

Docusaurus supports deploying as project pages or user/organization pages, your code repository does not even need to be public.

Even if your repository is private, anything published to a gh-pages branch will be public.

Note: When you deploy as user/organization page, the publish script will deploy these sites to the root of the master branch of the username.github.io repo. In this case, note that you will want to have the Docusaurus infra, your docs, etc. either in another branch of the username.github.io repo (e.g., maybe call it source), or in another, separate repo (e.g. in the same as the documented source code).

You will need to modify the file website/siteConfig.js and add the required parameters.

Name	Description
`organizationName`	The GitHub user or organization that owns the repository. If you are the owner, then it is your GitHub username. In the case of Docusaurus, that would be the "facebook" GitHub organization.
`projectName`	The name of the GitHub repository for your project. For example, the source code for Docusaurus is hosted at https://github.com/facebook/docusaurus, so our project name in this case would be "docusaurus".
`url`	Your website's URL. For projects hosted on GitHub pages, this will be "https://username.github.io"
`baseUrl`	Base URL for your project. For projects hosted on GitHub pages, it follows the format "/projectName/". For https://github.com/facebook/docusaurus, `baseUrl` is `/docusaurus/`.

const siteConfig = {
  ...
  url: 'https://__userName__.github.io', // Your website URL
  baseUrl: '/testProject/',
  projectName: 'testProject',
  organizationName: 'userName'
  ...
}

In case you want to deploy as a user or organization site, specify the project name as <username>.github.io or <orgname>.github.io. E.g. If your GitHub username is "user42" then user42.github.io, or in the case of an organization name of "org123", it will be org123.github.io.

Note: Not setting the url and baseUrl of your project might result in incorrect file paths generated which can cause broken links to assets paths like stylesheets and images.

While we recommend setting the projectName and organizationName in siteConfig.js, you can also use environment variables ORGANIZATION_NAME and PROJECT_NAME.

Now you have to specify the git user as an environment variable, and run the script publish-gh-pages

Name	Description
`GIT_USER`	The username for a GitHub account that has commit access to this repo. For your own repositories, this will usually be your own GitHub username. The specified `GIT_USER` must have push access to the repository specified in the combination of `organizationName` and `projectName`.

To run the script directly from the command-line, you can use the following, filling in the parameter values as appropriate.

GIT_USER=<GIT_USER> \
  CURRENT_BRANCH=master \
  USE_SSH=true \
  yarn run publish-gh-pages # or `npm run publish-gh-pages`

There are also two optional parameters that are set as environment variables:

Name	Description
`USE_SSH`	If this is set to `true`, then SSH is used instead of HTTPS for the connection to the GitHub repo. HTTPS is the default if this variable is not set.
`CURRENT_BRANCH`	The branch that contains the latest docs changes that will be deployed. Usually, the branch will be `master`, but it could be any branch (default or otherwise) except for `gh-pages`. If nothing is set for this variable, then the current branch will be used.

If you run into issues related to SSH keys, visit GitHub's authentication documentation.

You should now be able to load your website by visiting its GitHub Pages URL, which could be something along the lines of https://username.github.io/projectName, or a custom domain if you have set that up. For example, Docusaurus' own GitHub Pages URL is https://facebook.github.io/Docusaurus because it is served from the gh-pages branch of the https://github.com/facebook/docusaurus GitHub repository. However, it can also be accessed via https://docusaurus.io/, via a generated CNAME file which can be configured via the cname siteConfig option.

We highly encourage reading through the GitHub Pages documentation to learn more about how this hosting solution works.

You can run the command above any time you update the docs and wish to deploy the changes to your site. Running the script manually may be fine for sites where the documentation rarely changes and it is not too much of an inconvenience to remember to manually deploy changes.

However, you can automate the publishing process with continuous integration (CI).

Automating Deployments Using Continuous Integration

Continuous integration (CI) services are typically used to perform routine tasks whenever new commits are checked in to source control. These tasks can be any combination of running unit tests and integration tests, automating builds, publishing packages to NPM, and yes, deploying changes to your website. All you need to do to automate deployment of your website is to invoke the publish-gh-pages script whenever your docs get updated. In the following section, we'll be covering how to do just that using CircleCI, a popular continuous integration service provider.

Using CircleCI 2.0

If you haven't done so already, you can setup CircleCI for your open source project. Afterwards, in order to enable automatic deployment of your site and documentation via CircleCI, just configure Circle to run the publish-gh-pages script as part of the deployment step. You can follow the steps below to get that setup.

Ensure the GitHub account that will be set as the GIT_USER has write access to the repository that contains the documentation, by checking Settings | Collaborators & teams in the repository.
Log into GitHub as the GIT_USER.
Go to https://github.com/settings/tokens for the GIT_USER and generate a new personal access token, granting it full control of private repositories through the repository access scope. Store this token in a safe place, making sure to not share it with anyone. This token can be used to authenticate GitHub actions on your behalf in place of your GitHub password.
Open your CircleCI dashboard, and navigate to the Settings page for your repository, then select "Environment variables". The URL looks like https://circleci.com/gh/ORG/REPO/edit#env-vars, where "ORG/REPO" should be replaced with your own GitHub organization/repository.
Create a new environment variable named GITHUB_TOKEN, using your newly generated access token as the value.
Create a .circleci directory and create a config.yml under that directory.
Copy the text below into .circleci/config.yml.

# If you only want circle to run on direct commits to master, you can uncomment this out
# and uncomment the filters: *filter-only-master down below too
#
# aliases:
#  - &filter-only-master
#    branches:
#      only:
#        - master

version: 2
jobs:
  deploy-website:
    docker:
      # specify the version you desire here

      - image: circleci/node:8.11.1

    steps:

      - checkout
      - run:
          name: Deploying to GitHub Pages
          command: |
            git config --global user.email "<GITHUB_USERNAME>@users.noreply.github.com"
            git config --global user.name "<YOUR_NAME>"
            echo "machine github.com login <GITHUB_USERNAME> password $GITHUB_TOKEN" > ~/.netrc
            cd website && yarn install && GIT_USER=<GIT_USER> yarn run publish-gh-pages

workflows:
  version: 2
  build_and_deploy:
    jobs:

      - deploy-website:
#         filters: *filter-only-master

Make sure to replace all <....> in the command: sequence with appropriate values. For <GIT_USER>, it should be a GitHub account that has access to push documentation to your GitHub repository. Many times <GIT_USER> and <GITHUB_USERNAME> will be the same.

DO NOT place the actual value of $GITHUB_TOKEN in circle.yml. We already configured that as an environment variable back in Step 5.

If you want to use SSH for your GitHub repository connection, you can set USE_SSH=true. So the above command would look something like: cd website && npm install && GIT_USER=<GIT_USER> USE_SSH=true npm run publish-gh-pages.

Unlike when you run the publish-gh-pages script manually when the script runs within the Circle environment, the value of CURRENT_BRANCH is already defined as an environment variable within CircleCI and will be picked up by the script automatically.

Now, whenever a new commit lands in master, CircleCI will run your suite of tests and, if everything passes, your website will be deployed via the publish-gh-pages script.

If you would rather use a deploy key instead of a personal access token, you can by starting with the CircleCI instructions for adding a read/write deploy key.

Tips & Tricks

When initially deploying to a gh-pages branch using CircleCI, you may notice that some jobs triggered by commits to the gh-pages branch fail to run successfully due to a lack of tests (This can also result in chat/slack build failure notifications).

You can work around this by:

Setting the environment variable CUSTOM_COMMIT_MESSAGE flag to the publish-gh-pages command with the contents of [skip ci]. e.g.

CUSTOM_COMMIT_MESSAGE="[skip ci]" \
  yarn run publish-gh-pages # or `npm run publish-gh-pages`

Alternatively, you can work around this by creating a basic CircleCI config with the following contents:

# CircleCI 2.0 Config File
# This config file will prevent tests from being run on the gh-pages branch.
version: 2
jobs:
  build:
    machine: true
    branches:
      ignore: gh-pages
    steps:
      - run: echo "Skipping tests on gh-pages branch"

Save this file as config.yml and place it in a .circleci directory inside your website/static directory.

Using Travis CI

Go to https://github.com/settings/tokens and generate a new personal access token
Using your GitHub account, add the Travis CI app to the repository you want to activate.
Open your Travis CI dashboard. The URL looks like https://travis-ci.com/USERNAME/REPO, and navigate to the More options > Setting > Environment Variables section of your repository.
Create a new environment variable named GH_TOKEN with your newly generated token as its value, then GH_EMAIL (your email address) and GH_NAME (your GitHub username).
Create a .travis.yml on the root of your repository with below text.

# .travis.yml
language: node_js
node_js:
  - '8'
branches:
  only:
    - master
cache:
  yarn: true
script:
  - git config --global user.name "${GH_NAME}"
  - git config --global user.email "${GH_EMAIL}"
  - echo "machine github.com login ${GH_NAME} password ${GH_TOKEN}" > ~/.netrc
  - cd website && yarn install && GIT_USER="${GH_NAME}" yarn run publish-gh-pages

Now, whenever a new commit lands in master, Travis CI will run your suite of tests and, if everything passes, your website will be deployed via the publish-gh-pages script.

Hosting on ZEIT Now

With ZEIT Now, you can deploy your site and connect it to GitHub or GitLab to automatically receive a new deployment every time you push a commit.

Hosting on Netlify

Steps to configure your Docusaurus-powered site on Netlify.

Select New site from Git
Connect to your preferred Git provider.
Select the branch to deploy. Default is master
Configure your build steps:

For your build command enter: cd website; npm install; npm run build;
For publish directory: website/build/<projectName> (use the projectName from your siteConfig)

Click Deploy site

You can also configure Netlify to rebuild on every commit to your repository, or only master branch commits.

Hosting on Render

Render offers free static site hosting with fully managed SSL, custom domains, a global CDN and continuous auto deploys from your Git repo. Deploy your app in just a few minutes by following these steps.

Create a new Web Service on Render, and give Render's GitHub app permission to access your Docusaurus repo.
Select the branch to deploy. The default is master.
Enter the following values during creation.

Field	Value
Environment	`Static Site`
Build Command	`cd website; yarn install; yarn build`
Publish Directory	`website/build/<projectName>`

`projectName` is the value you defined in your `siteConfig.js`.

const siteConfig = {
  // ...
  projectName: 'your-project-name',
  // ...

That's it! Your app will be live on your Render URL as soon as the build finishes.

Publishing to GitHub Enterprise

GitHub enterprise installations should work in the same manner as github.com; you only need to identify the organization's GitHub Enterprise host.

Name	Description
`GITHUB_HOST`	The hostname for the GitHub enterprise server.

Alter your siteConfig.js to add a property 'githubHost' which represents the GitHub Enterprise hostname. Alternatively, set an environment variable GITHUB_HOST when executing the publish command.