Deployment

To build the static files of your website for production, run:

npm

npm run build

Yarn

yarn run build

Once it finishes, the static files will be generated within the build directory.

note

The only responsibility of Docusaurus is to build your site and emit static files in build.

It is now up to you to choose how to host those static files.

You can deploy your site to static site hosting services such as Vercel, GitHub Pages, Netlify, Render, Surge...

A Docusaurus site is statically rendered, and it can generally work without JavaScript!

Testing your Build Locally

It is important to test your build locally before deploying to production.

Docusaurus includes a docusaurus serve command for that:

npm

npm run serve

Yarn

yarn run serve

Trailing slash configuration

Docusaurus has a trailingSlash config, to allow customizing URLs/links and emitted filename patterns.

The default value generally works fine.

Unfortunately, each static hosting provider has a different behavior, and deploying the exact same site to various hosts can lead to distinct results.

Depending on your host, it can be useful to change this config.

tip

Use slorber/trailing-slash-guide to understand better the behavior of your host and configure trailingSlash appropriately.

Self-Hosting

Docusaurus can be self-hosted using docusaurus serve. Change port using --port and --host to change host.

npm

npm run serve -- --build --port 80 --host 0.0.0.0

Yarn

yarn run serve -- --build --port 80 --host 0.0.0.0

warning

It is not the best option, compared to a static hosting provider / CDN.

Deploying to GitHub Pages

Docusaurus provides an easy way to publish to GitHub Pages. Which is hosting that comes for free with every GitHub repository.

docusaurus.config.js settings

First, modify your docusaurus.config.js and add the required params:

Name	Description
organizationName	The GitHub user or organization that owns the repository. If you are the owner, it is your GitHub username. In the case of Docusaurus, it is "facebook" which is the GitHub organization that owns Docusaurus.
projectName	The name of the GitHub repository. For example, the repository name for Docusaurus is "docusaurus", so the project name is "docusaurus".
url	URL for your GitHub Page's user/organization page. This is commonly 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/.

info

In case you want to use your custom domain for GitHub Pages, create a CNAME file in the static directory. Anything within the static directory will be copied to the root of the build directory for deployment.

When using a custom domain, you should be able to move back from baseUrl: '/projectName/' to baseUrl: '/'

You may refer to GitHub Pages' documentation User, Organization, and Project Pages for more details.

caution

GitHub Pages adds a trailing slash to Docusaurus URLs by default. It is recommended to set a trailingSlash config (true or false, not undefined).

Example:

docusaurus.config.js

module.exports = {
  // ...
  url: 'https://endiliey.github.io', // Your website URL
  baseUrl: '/',
  projectName: 'endiliey.github.io',
  organizationName: 'endiliey',
  trailingSlash: false,
  // ...
};

warning

By default, GitHub Pages runs published files through Jekyll. Since Jekyll will discard any files that begin with _, it is recommended that you disable Jekyll by adding an empty file named .nojekyll file to your static directory.

Environment settings

Specify the Git user as an environment variable.

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 GitHub username. The specified GIT_USER must have push access to the repository specified in the combination of organizationName and projectName.

Optional parameters, also set as environment variables:

Name	Description
USE_SSH	Set to true to use SSH instead of the default HTTPS for the connection to the GitHub repo.
DEPLOYMENT_BRANCH	The branch that the website will be deployed to, defaults to gh-pages. For GitHub Pages Organization repos (config.projectName ending in github.io), this env variable is required.
CURRENT_BRANCH	The branch that contains the latest docs changes that will be deployed. Usually, the branch will be main, 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.
GIT_PASS	Password (or token) of the git user (specified by GIT_USER). For example, to facilitate non-interactive deployment (e.g. continuous deployment)

GitHub enterprise installations should work in the same manner as github.com; you only need to set the organization's GitHub Enterprise host as an environment variable:

Name	Description
GITHUB_HOST	The domain name of your GitHub enterprise site.
GITHUB_PORT	The port of your GitHub enterprise site.

Deploy

Finally, to deploy your site to GitHub Pages, run:

Bash

GIT_USER=<GITHUB_USERNAME> yarn deploy

Windows

cmd /C "set "GIT_USER=<GITHUB_USERNAME>" && yarn deploy"

PowerShell

cmd /C 'set "GIT_USER=<GITHUB_USERNAME>" && yarn deploy'

Triggering deployment with GitHub Actions

GitHub Actions allow you to automate, customize, and execute your software development workflows right in your repository.

This workflow assumes your documentation resided in documentation branch of your repository and your publishing source is configured for gh-pages branch.

1. Generate a new SSH key.
2. By default, your public key should have been created in ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub or use the name you've provided in the previous step to add your key to GitHub deploy keys.
3. Copy key to clipboard with xclip -sel clip < ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub and paste it as a deploy key in your repository. Copy file content if the command line doesn't work for you. Check the box for Allow write access before saving your deployment key.
4. You'll need your private key as a GitHub secret to allow Docusaurus to run the deployment for you.
5. Copy your private key with xclip -sel clip < ~/.ssh/id_rsa and paste a GitHub secret with name GH_PAGES_DEPLOY. Copy file content if the command line doesn't work for you. Save your secret.
6. Create your documentation workflow file in .github/workflows/. In this example it's documentation.yml.

warning

Please make sure that you replace actions@github.com with your GitHub email and gh-actions with your name.

documentation.yml

name: documentation

on:
  pull_request:
    branches: [documentation]
  push:
    branches: [documentation]

jobs:
  checks:
    if: github.event_name != 'push'
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v1
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v1
        with:
          node-version: '12.x'
      - name: Test Build
        run: |
          if [ -e yarn.lock ]; then
            yarn install --frozen-lockfile
          elif [ -e package-lock.json ]; then
            npm ci
          else
            npm i
          fi
          npm run build
  gh-release:
    if: github.event_name != 'pull_request'
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v1
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v1
        with:
          node-version: '12.x'
      - uses: webfactory/ssh-agent@v0.5.0
        with:
          ssh-private-key: ${{ secrets.GH_PAGES_DEPLOY }}
      - name: Release to GitHub Pages
        env:
          USE_SSH: true
          GIT_USER: git
        run: |
          git config --global user.email "actions@github.com"
          git config --global user.name "gh-actions"
          if [ -e yarn.lock ]; then
            yarn install --frozen-lockfile
          elif [ -e package-lock.json ]; then
            npm ci
          else
            npm i
          fi
          npm run deploy

1. Now when a new pull request arrives towards your repository in branch documentation it will automatically ensure that Docusaurus build is successful.
2. When pull request is merged to documentation branch or someone pushes to documentation branch directly it will be built and deployed to gh-pages branch.
3. After this step, your updated documentation will be available on the GitHub pages.

Triggering deployment with Travis CI

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 deploying changes to your website. All you need to do to automate the deployment of your website is to invoke the yarn deploy script whenever your website is updated. The following section covers how to do just that using Travis CI, a popular continuous integration service provider.

1. Go to https://github.com/settings/tokens and generate a new personal access token. When creating the token, grant it the repo scope so that it has the permissions it needs.
2. Using your GitHub account, add the Travis CI app to the repository you want to activate.
3. 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.
4. 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).
5. Create a .travis.yml on the root of your repository with the following:

.travis.yml

language: node_js
node_js:
  - '12.13.0'
branches:
  only:
    - main
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 ${GH_TOKEN}" > ~/.netrc
  - yarn && GIT_USER="${GH_NAME}" yarn deploy

Now, whenever a new commit lands in main, Travis CI will run your suite of tests and if everything passes, your website will be deployed via the yarn deploy script.

Triggering deployment with Buddy

Buddy is an easy-to-use CI/CD tool that allows you to automate the deployment of your portal to different environments, including GitHub Pages.

Follow these steps to create a pipeline that automatically deploys a new version of your website whenever you push changes to the selected branch of your project:

1. Go to https://github.com/settings/tokens and generate a new personal access token. When creating the token, grant it the repo scope so that it has the permissions it needs.
2. Sign in to your Buddy account and create a new project.
3. Choose GitHub as your git hosting provider and select the repository with the code of your website.
4. Using the left navigation panel, switch to the Pipelines view.
5. Create a new pipeline. Define its name, set the trigger mode to On push, and select the branch that triggers the pipeline execution.
6. Add a Node.js action.
7. Add these command in the action's terminal:

   GIT_USER=<GH_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN>
   git config --global user.email "<YOUR_GH_EMAIL>"
   git config --global user.name "<YOUR_GH_USERNAME>"
   yarn deploy

After creating this simple pipeline, each new commit pushed to the branch you selected deploys your website to GitHub Pages using yarn deploy. Read this guide to learn more about setting up a CI/CD pipeline for Docusaurus.

Using Azure Pipelines

1. Sign Up at Azure Pipelines if you haven't already.
2. Create an organization and within the organization create a project and connect your repository from GitHub.
3. Go to https://github.com/settings/tokens and generate a new personal access token with the repo scope.
4. In the project page (which looks like https://dev.azure.com/ORG_NAME/REPO_NAME/_build create a new pipeline with the following text. Also, click on edit and add 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). Make sure to mark them as secret. Alternatively, you can also add a file named azure-pipelines.yml at your repository root.

azure-pipelines.yml

trigger:
  - main

pool:
  vmImage: 'ubuntu-latest'

steps:
  - checkout: self
    persistCredentials: true

  - task: NodeTool@0
    inputs:
      versionSpec: '10.x'
    displayName: 'Install Node.js'

  - script: |
      git config --global user.name "${GH_NAME}"
      git config --global user.email "${GH_EMAIL}"
      git checkout -b main
      echo "machine github.com login ${GH_NAME} password ${GH_TOKEN}" > ~/.netrc
      yarn && GIT_USER="${GH_NAME}" yarn deploy
    env:
      GH_NAME: $(GH_NAME)
      GH_EMAIL: $(GH_EMAIL)
      GH_TOKEN: $(GH_TOKEN)
    displayName: 'yarn install and build'

Using Drone

1. Create a new ssh key that will be the deploy key for your project.
2. Name your private and public keys to be specific and so that it does not overwrite your other ssh keys.
3. Go to https://github.com/USERNAME/REPO/settings/keys and add a new deploy key by pasting in our public key you just generated.
4. Open your Drone.io dashboard and login. The URL looks like https://cloud.drone.io/USERNAME/REPO.
5. Click on the repository, click on activate repository, and add a secret called git_deploy_private_key with your private key value that you just generated.
6. Create a .drone.yml on the root of your repository with below text.

# .drone.yml
kind: pipeline
type: docker
trigger:
  event:
    - tag
- name: Website
  image: node
  commands:
    - mkdir -p $HOME/.ssh
    - ssh-keyscan -t rsa github.com >> $HOME/.ssh/known_hosts
    - echo "$GITHUB_PRIVATE_KEY > $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa"
    - chmod 0600 $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa
    - cd website
    - npm i
    - npm run publish-gh-pages
  environment:
    USE_SSH: true
    GIT_USER: $DRONE_COMMIT_AUTHOR
    GITHUB_PRIVATE_KEY: git_deploy_private_key

Now, whenever you push a new tag to github, this trigger will start the drone ci job to publish your website.

Deploying to Netlify

To deploy your Docusaurus 2 sites to Netlify, first make sure the following options are properly configured:

docusaurus.config.js

module.exports = {
  url: 'https://docusaurus-2.netlify.com', // Url to your site with no trailing slash
  baseUrl: '/', // Base directory of your site relative to your repo
  // ...
};

Then, create your site with Netlify.

While you set up the site, specify the build commands and directories as follows:

• build command: npm run build
• build directory: build

If you did not configure these build options, you may still go to "Site settings" -> "Build and deploy" after your site is created.

Once properly configured with the above options, your site should deploy and automatically redeploy upon merging to your deploy branch, which defaults to main.

caution

Some Docusaurus sites put the docs folder outside of website (most likely former Docusaurus v1 sites):

repo           # git root
├── docs       # md files
└── website    # docusaurus root

If you decide to use the website folder as Netlify's base directory, Netlify will not trigger builds when you update the docs folder, and you need to configure a custom ignore command:

website/netlify.toml

[build]
  ignore = "git diff --quiet $CACHED_COMMIT_REF $COMMIT_REF . ../docs/"

warning

By default, Netlify adds trailing slashes to Docusaurus URLs.

It is recommended to disable the Netlify setting Post Processing > Asset Optimization > Pretty Urls to prevent lowercased URLs, unnecessary redirects and 404 errors.

Be very careful: the Disable asset optimization global checkbox is broken and does not really disable the Pretty URLs setting in practice. Please make sure to uncheck it independently.

If you want to keep the Pretty Urls Netlify setting on, adjust the trailingSlash Docusaurus config appropriately.

Refer to slorber/trailing-slash-guide for more information.

Deploying to Vercel

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

To deploy your Docusaurus project with a Vercel for Git Integration, make sure it has been pushed to a Git repository.

Import the project into Vercel using the Import Flow. During the import, you will find all relevant options preconfigured for you; however, you can choose to change any of these options, a list of which can be found here.

After your project has been imported, all subsequent pushes to branches will generate Preview Deployments, and all changes made to the Production Branch (commonly "main") will result in a Production Deployment.

Deploying to Render

Render offers free static site hosting with fully managed SSL, custom domains, a global CDN and continuous auto-deploy from your Git repo. Get started in just a few minutes by following Render's guide to deploying Docusaurus.

Deploying to Qovery

Qovery is a fully-managed cloud platform that runs on your AWS, Digital Ocean and Scaleway account where you can host static sites, backend APIs, databases, cron jobs, and all your other apps in one place.

1. Create a Qovery account. Visit the Qovery dashboard to create an account if you don't already have one.

2. Create a project

• Click on Create project and give a name to your project.
• Click on Next.

3. Create a new environment

• Click on Create environment and give a name (e.g. staging, production).

4. Add an application

• Click on Create an application, give a name and select your GitHub or GitLab repository where your Docusaurus app is located.
• Define the main branch name and the root application path.
• Click on Create.

After the application is created:

• Navigate to your application Settings
• Select Port
• Add port used by your Docusaurus application

5. Deploy All you have to do now is to navigate to your application and click on Deploy

That's it. Watch the status and wait till the app is deployed.

To open the application in your browser, click on Action and Open in your application overview

Deploying to Hostman

Hostman allows you to host static websites for free. Hostman automates everything, you just need to connect your repository and follow easy steps:

1. Create a service

To deploy a Docusaurus static website, click Create in the top-left corner of your Dashboard and choose Front-end app or static website.

2. Select the project to deploy

If you are logged in to Hostman with your GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket account, at this point you will see the repository with your projects, including the private ones.

Choose the project you want to deploy. It must contain the directory with the project’s files (usually it is website or my-website).

To access a different repository, click Connect another repository.

If you didn’t use your Git account credentials to log in, you’ll be able to access the necessary account now, and then select the project.

3. Configure the build settings Next, the Website customization window will appear.

Choose the Static website option from the list of frameworks.

The Directory with app points at the directory that will contain the project's files after the build. You can leave it empty if during Step 2 you selected the repository with the contents of the website (or my_website) directory.

The standard build command for Docusaurus will be:

yarn run build

You can modify the build command if needed. You can enter multiple commands separated by &&.

4. Deploy Click Deploy to start the build process.

Once it starts, you will enter the deployment log. If there are any issues with the code, you will get warning or error messages in the log, specifying the cause of the problem.

Usually the log contains all the debugging data you'll need, but we are also here to help you solve the issues, so do not hesitate to contact us via chat.

When the deployment is complete, you will receive an e-mail notification and also see a log entry.

All done!

Your project is up and ready.

Deploying to Surge

Surge is a static web hosting platform, it is used to deploy your Docusaurus project from the command line in a minute. Deploying your project to Surge is easy and it is also free (including a custom domain and SSL).

Deploy your app in a matter of seconds using surge with the following steps:

1. First, install Surge using npm by running the following command:

npm install --g surge

2. To build the static files of your site for production in the root directory of your project, run:

npm run build

3. Then, run this command inside the root directory of your project:

surge build/

First-time users of Surge would be prompted to create an account from the command line(happens only once).

Confirm that the site you want to publish is in the build directory, a randomly generated subdomain *.surge.sh subdomain is always given (which can be edited).

Using your domain

If you have a domain name you can deploy your site using surge to your domain using the command:

surge build/ yourdomain.com

Your site is now deployed for free at subdomain.surge.sh or yourdomain.com depending on the method you chose.

Setting up CNAME file

Store your domain in a CNAME file for future deployments with the following command:

echo subdomain.surge.sh > CNAME

You can deploy any other changes in the future with the command surge.

Deploying to QuantCDN

1. Install Quant CLI

2. Create a QuantCDN account by signing up

3. Initialize your project with quant init and fill in your credentials:

quant init

4. Deploy your site

quant deploy

See docs and blog for more examples and use cases for deploying to QuantCDN.