Website Deployment with Git and Hugo

Deploying a website with Git and Hugo (or any other static website generator for that matter) is easy. I use a combination of Git and server-side website generation for jofu.org. This has the advantage that all my files are under version control and when I am ready to deploy some changes on my website, the process is as simple as committing changes to my local repository and pushing them to my deploy target.

1. In case your website is not yet under version control:

   cd ./website
   git init
   echo "public" >> .gitignore
   git add --all
   git commit -m "adding website to git"
   

2. Make a clone:

   git clone --bare website/
   

   Upload it to your server:

   scp -r website.git git@server.com:
   

3. And add the just uploaded clone as remote:

   cd website/
   git remote add deploy git@server.com:website.git
   git push --set-upstream deploy master
   

4. Set-up a post-receive hook

   On your server in the website.git folder:

   vi hooks/post-receive
   

   and add:

   git clone --recursive /home/git/website.git /home/git/tmp/website
   /usr/local/bin/hugo -s /home/git/tmp/website -d /usr/share/nginx/website -b "http://www.website.com"
   rm -Rf /home/git/tmp/website
   exit
   

   Assuming the Hugo binary is installed in /usr/local/bin/ Folders need to be changed based on your setup. --recursive is needed in case your theme is a submodule of your repository.

   Save and make executable.

   chmod 755 post-receive
   

5. Test your deployment setup

   On your local git repo:

   git add --all
   git commit -m "some changes"
   git push deploy master
   

   You should see something like that:

   remote: Cloning into /home/git/tmp/jofu.org...
   remote: done.
   remote: Submodule 'themes/clean-site' (https://github.com/jf87/clean-site.git) registered for path 'themes/clean-site'
   remote: Cloning into themes/clean-site...
   remote: Submodule path 'themes/clean-site': checked out 'e9defa633ea12c0de10dfb6bbd1ec008120ccfa8'
   remote: 0 draft content
   remote: 0 future content
   remote: 3 pages created
   remote: 2 paginator pages created
   remote: 0 tags created
   remote: 0 categories created
   remote: in 40 ms