Set subdirectory as website root on Github Pages

Question

I'm using Github Pages to host & serve a static website.

The static website has the typical directory structure for an app:

.
├ source/
├ build/
│ └ index.html
├ .gitignore
├ config.rb
├ Gemfile
┆ ...
└ README.MD

index.html is under build/, so I want to make that the default www path.

So when users hit username.github.io it renders the content within that subdirectory and yet it doesn't show "/build/" on the URL, cause that's set as the root folder.

Notes:

• I don't have a custom domain nor planning to get one for this purpose. As you can see, I'm trying to leverage the default URL naming convention github provides.
• Not using Jekyll nor the automatic page generator function.

Answer 1

There is a detailed gist with all the required steps.

The gist is here:
https://gist.github.com/cobyism/4730490

---

From the gist

Deploying a subfolder to GitHub Pages

Sometimes you want to have a subdirectory on the master branch be the root directory of a repository’s gh-pages branch. This is useful for things like sites developed with Yeoman, or if you have a Jekyll site contained in the master branch alongside the rest of your code.

For the sake of this example, let’s pretend the subfolder containing your site is named dist.

Step 1

Remove the dist directory from the project’s .gitignore file (it’s ignored by default by Yeoman).

Step 2

Make sure git knows about your subtree (the subfolder with your site).

git add dist && git commit -m "Initial dist subtree commit"

Step 3

Use subtree push to send it to the gh-pages branch on GitHub.

git subtree push --prefix dist origin gh-pages

Boom. If your folder isn’t called dist, then you’ll need to change that in each of the commands above.

---

If you do this on a regular basis, you could also create a script containing the following somewhere in your path:

#!/bin/sh
if [ -z "$1" ]
then
  echo "Which folder do you want to deploy to GitHub Pages?"
  exit 1
fi
git subtree push --prefix $1 origin gh-pages

Which lets you type commands like:

git gh-deploy path/to/your/site

Answer 2

Since August 2016 you can use /docs subfolder of the master branch for your sources.

So if you can tell to your site generator to use /docs in place of /build you are done (without subtree).

Note: As pointed out by @thislooksfun in the comment, this is valid only for project pages (like <username>.github.io/<projectname>), but not for user or organization pages (like <name>.github.io).

Answer 3

Somehow for me, the accepted answer only runs the first time. Re-doing it throws errors.

I solved it by running the commands below:

git checkout --orphan gh-pages
git --work-tree build add --all
git --work-tree build commit -m 'gh-pages'
git push origin HEAD:gh-pages --force
git checkout -f master

Answer 4

To get this to work for gh-pages branch for hugo sites that use a public/ folder, here is what I have working that is super hacky but gets the job done:

Note: hugolanding is the folder root where your config.toml is, this script runs from a scripts folder, you could totally move it elsewhere and change that line.

#!/bin/bash
# move to root
cd ../hugolanding
# generate public content
hugo -D
# prep copy folder
rm -rf /tmp/public && mkdir -p /tmp/public
# copy out of git shit
cp -R public/* /tmp/public
# git yolo everything
git add -A 
git commit -m 'updates to public'
git push --recurse-submodules=on-demand
git checkout gh-pages
cd ..
cp -R /tmp/public/* .
git add -A 
git commit -m 'updated gh-pages'
git push --recurse-submodules=on-demand
echo "done"
git checkout main

Answer 5

push-dir will do it:

npm install push-direxample
push-dir --dir=build --branch=gh-pages