(gh-pages)=

# Hosting websites/homepages on GitHub Pages

```{questions}
- How to serve a website/homepage using GitHub
```

## Hosting websites/homepages on GitHub Pages

You can host your personal homepage or group webpage
or project website on GitHub using
[GitHub Pages](https://pages.github.com/).

[GitLab](https://about.gitlab.com/features/pages/) and
[Bitbucket](https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucket/publishing-a-website-on-bitbucket-cloud-221449776.html)
also offer a very similar solution.

Unless you need user authentication or a sophisticated database behind your website,
[GitHub Pages](https://pages.github.com/) can be a very nice alternative
to running your own web servers.

This is how all
[https://coderefinery.org](https://coderefinery.org)
material is hosted.

---

```{figure} img/gh-pages.svg
:alt: Scheme that describes how branch names end up websites

Scheme that describes how branch names end up websites.
```

---

## Exercise - Your own github page

```{exercise} gh-pages-2: Host your own github page
- Deploy own website reusing a template:
  - Follow the steps from GitHub Pages <https://pages.github.com/>.
    The documentation there is very good so there is no need for us to duplicate the screenshots
  - Select "Project site"
  - Select "Choose a theme" (for instance "Minimal")
  - Click "Select theme"
  - Adjust the README.md and commit
  - Browse your page on `http://username.github.io/repository` (adjust "username" and "repository")
- Make a change to the repository after the webpage has been deployed for the first time
- Please wait few minutes and then verify that the change shows up on the website
```

```{callout} Real-life examples
- Research Software Hour (built using [Zola](https://www.getzola.org/))
  - [Source](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ResearchSoftwareHour/researchsoftwarehour.github.io/main/content/about.md)
  - Result: <https://researchsoftwarehour.github.io/about/>
- This lesson (built using [Sphinx](https://www.sphinx-doc.org/)
    and [MyST](https://myst-parser.readthedocs.io/)
    and [sphinx-lesson](https://coderefinery.github.io/sphinx-lesson/))
  - [Source](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/coderefinery/documentation/main/content/gh-pages.md)
  - Result: this page
```

```{note}
- You can use HTML directly or another static site generator if you prefer
  to not use the default [Jekyll](https://jekyllrb.com/).
- It is no problem to use a custom domain instead of `*.github.io`.
```