Simple CI/CD for static sites

For a static site on GitHub Pages, you can avoid committing build artifacts and let CI do the work.

A single GitHub Actions workflow can checkout the repo, install Hugo, run hugo --minify, and deploy the contents of public/ to the Pages branch. The GITHUB_TOKEN is enough for push access when the workflow is in the same repo.

Keep the source in main: content, layouts, and config. The workflow runs on push to main, builds the site, and updates the deployment branch. That keeps history clean and prevents merge conflicts from generated files.

Add a step to fail the job if hugo returns a non-zero exit code so broken content or templates don’t get deployed. Optionally cache the Hugo binary to speed up runs.

Same idea works for other static generators (Jekyll, Eleventy, etc.): build in the runner, then deploy the output directory.