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Tutorial: Create a GitLab Pages website from scratch

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This tutorial shows you how to create a Pages site from scratch using the Jekyll Static Site Generator (SSG). You start with a blank project and create your own CI/CD configuration file, which gives instructions to a runner. When your CI/CD pipeline runs, the Pages site is created.

This example uses Jekyll, but other SSGs follow similar steps. You do not need to be familiar with Jekyll or SSGs to complete this tutorial.

To create a GitLab Pages website:

Prerequisites

You must have a blank project in GitLab.

Create the project files

Create three files in the root (top-level) directory:

  • .gitlab-ci.yml: A YAML file that contains the commands you want to run. For now, leave the file's contents blank.

  • index.html: An HTML file you can populate with whatever HTML content you'd like, for example:

    <html>
<head>
  <title>Home</title>
</head>
<body>
  <h1>Hello World!</h1>
</body>
</html>

  • Gemfile: A file that describes dependencies for Ruby programs.

    Populate it with this content:

    source "https://rubygems.org"

gem "jekyll"

Choose a Docker image

In this example, the runner uses a Docker image to run scripts and deploy the site.

This specific Ruby image is maintained on DockerHub.

Edit your .gitlab-ci.yml file and add this text as the first line:

image: ruby:3.2

If your SSG needs NodeJS to build, you must specify an image that contains NodeJS as part of its file system. For example, for a Hexo site, you can use image: node:12.17.0.

Install Jekyll

To run Jekyll locally, you must install it:

  1. Open your terminal.
  2. Install Bundler by running gem install bundler.
  3. Create Gemfile.lock by running bundle install.
  4. Install Jekyll by running bundle exec jekyll build.

To run Jekyll in your project, edit the .gitlab-ci.yml file and add the installation commands:

script:
  - gem install bundler
  - bundle install
  - bundle exec jekyll build

In addition, in the .gitlab-ci.yml file, each script is organized by a job. A job includes the scripts and settings you want to apply to that specific task.

job:
  script:
  - gem install bundler
  - bundle install
  - bundle exec jekyll build

For GitLab Pages, this job has a specific name, called pages. This setting tells the runner you want the job to deploy your website with GitLab Pages:

pages:
  script:
    - gem install bundler
    - bundle install
    - bundle exec jekyll build

Specify the public directory for output

Jekyll needs to know where to generate its output. GitLab Pages only considers files in a directory called public.

Jekyll uses a destination flag (-d) to specify an output directory for the built website. Add the destination to your .gitlab-ci.yml file:

pages:
  script:
    - gem install bundler
    - bundle install
    - bundle exec jekyll build -d public

Specify the public directory for artifacts

Now that Jekyll has output the files to the public directory, the runner needs to know where to get them. The artifacts are stored in the public directory:

pages:
  script:
    - gem install bundler
    - bundle install
    - bundle exec jekyll build -d public
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - public

Your .gitlab-ci.yml file should now look like this:

image: ruby:3.2

pages:
  script:
    - gem install bundler
    - bundle install
    - bundle exec jekyll build -d public
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - public

Deploy and view your website

After you have completed the preceding steps, deploy your website:

  1. Save and commit the .gitlab-ci.yml file.
  2. Go to Build > Pipelines to watch the pipeline.
  3. When the pipeline is finished, go to Deploy > Pages to find the link to your Pages website.

When this pages job completes successfully, a special pages:deploy job appears in the pipeline view. It prepares the content of the website for the GitLab Pages daemon. GitLab runs it in the background and doesn't use a runner.

Other options for your CI/CD file

If you want to do more advanced tasks, you can update your .gitlab-ci.yml file with other CI/CD YAML keywords. You can validate your .gitlab-ci.yml file with the CI Lint tool that's included with GitLab.

The following topics show other examples of other options you can add to your CI/CD file.

Deploy specific branches to a Pages site

You may want to deploy to a Pages site only from specific branches.

First, add a workflow section to force the pipeline to run only when changes are pushed to branches:

image: ruby:3.2

workflow:
  rules:
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH

pages:
  script:
    - gem install bundler
    - bundle install
    - bundle exec jekyll build -d public
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - public

Then configure the pipeline to run the job for the default branch (here, main) only.

image: ruby:3.2

workflow:
  rules:
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH

pages:
  script:
    - gem install bundler
    - bundle install
    - bundle exec jekyll build -d public
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - public
  rules:
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == "main"

Specify a stage to deploy

There are three default stages for GitLab CI/CD: build, test, and deploy.

If you want to test your script and check the built site before deploying to production, you can run the test exactly as it runs when you push to your default branch (here, main).

To specify a stage for your job to run in, add a stage line to your CI file:

image: ruby:3.2

workflow:
  rules:
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH

pages:
  stage: deploy
  script:
    - gem install bundler
    - bundle install
    - bundle exec jekyll build -d public
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - public
  rules:
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == "main"
  environment: production

Now add another job to the CI file, telling it to test every push to every branch except the main branch:

image: ruby:3.2

workflow:
  rules:
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH

pages:
  stage: deploy
  script:
    - gem install bundler
    - bundle install
    - bundle exec jekyll build -d public
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - public
  rules:
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == "main"
  environment: production

test:
  stage: test
  script:
    - gem install bundler
    - bundle install
    - bundle exec jekyll build -d test
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - test
  rules:
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH != "main"

When the test job runs in the test stage, Jekyll builds the site in a directory called test. The job affects all branches except main.

When you apply stages to different jobs, every job in the same stage builds in parallel. If your web application needs more than one test before being deployed, you can run all your tests at the same time.

Remove duplicate commands

To avoid duplicating the same scripts in every job, you can add them to a before_script section.

In the example, gem install bundler and bundle install were running for both jobs, pages and test.

Move these commands to a before_script section:

image: ruby:3.2

workflow:
  rules:
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH

before_script:
  - gem install bundler
  - bundle install

pages:
  stage: deploy
  script:
    - bundle exec jekyll build -d public
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - public
  rules:
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == "main"
  environment: production

test:
  stage: test
  script:
    - bundle exec jekyll build -d test
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - test
  rules:
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH != "main"

Build faster with cached dependencies

To build faster, you can cache the installation files for your project's dependencies by using the cache parameter.

This example caches Jekyll dependencies in a vendor directory when you run bundle install:

image: ruby:3.2

workflow:
  rules:
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH

cache:
  paths:
    - vendor/

before_script:
  - gem install bundler
  - bundle install --path vendor

pages:
  stage: deploy
  script:
    - bundle exec jekyll build -d public
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - public
  rules:
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == "main"
  environment: production

test:
  stage: test
  script:
    - bundle exec jekyll build -d test
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - test
  rules:
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH != "main"

In this case, you need to exclude the /vendor directory from the list of folders Jekyll builds. Otherwise, Jekyll tries to build the directory contents along with the site.

In the root directory, create a file called _config.yml and add this content:

exclude:
  - vendor

Now GitLab CI/CD not only builds the website, but also:

  • Pushes with continuous tests to feature branches.
  • Caches dependencies installed with Bundler.
  • Continuously deploys every push to the main branch.

To view the HTML and other assets that were created for the site, download the job artifacts.

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