Middleman Github Pages

Middleman makes creating static sites a joy, Github Pages hosts static sites for free, Middleman Github Pages brings the two together. Middleman Github Pages is just a few rake tasks that automate the process of deploying a Middleman site to Github Pages.

Installation

Add this line to your Gemfile:

gem 'middleman-gh-pages'

You'll also need to require the gem in your Rakefile:

require 'middleman-gh-pages'

Usage

Middleman Github Pages provides the following rake tasks:

rake build    # Compile all files into the build directory
rake publish  # Build and publish to Github Pages

The only assumption is that you are deploying to a gh-pages branch in the same remote as the source. rake publish will create this branch for you if it doesn't exist.

Options

You cannot deploy your site if you have uncommitted changes. You can override this with the ALLOW_DIRTY option:

bundle exec rake publish ALLOW_DIRTY=true

You can append a custom suffix to commit messages on the build branch:

bundle exec rake publish COMMIT_MESSAGE_SUFFIX="--skip-ci"

You can change the remote that you deploy to:

bundle exec rake publish REMOTE_NAME=upstream

Custom Domain

To set up a custom domain, you can follow the GitHub help page.

NOTE You will need to put your CNAME file in the source directory of your middleman project, NOT in its root directory. This will result in the CNAME file being in the root of the generated static site in your gh-pages branch.

Project Page Path Issues

Since project pages deploy to a subdirectory, assets and page paths are relative to the organization or user that owns the repo. If you're treating the project pages as a standalone site, you can tell Middleman to generate relative paths for assets and links with these settings in the build configuration in config.rb

activate :relative_assets
set :relative_links, true

NOTE This only affects sites being accessed at the username.github.io/projectname URL, not when accessed at a custom CNAME.

Contributing

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request