GitLab Pages

  1. Create a new repository named username.gitlab.io, where username is your username on GitLab. If you have already uploaded to other repo, rename the repo instead.
  2. Enable Shared Runners via Settings > CI/CD > Runners > Enable shared runners for this project.
  3. Push the files of your Hexo folder to the repository. The public/ folder is not (and should not be) uploaded by default, make sure the .gitignore file contains public/ line. The folder structure should be roughly similar to this repo.
  4. Check what version of Node.js you are using on your local machine with node --version. Make a note of the major version (e.g., v16.y.z)
  5. Add .gitlab-ci.yml file to the root folder of your repo (alongside _config.yml & package.json) with the following content (replacing 16 with the major version of Node.js you noted in previous step):
image: node:16-alpine
cache:
  paths:
    - node_modules/

before_script:
  - npm install hexo-cli -g
  - npm install

pages:
  script:
    - npm run build
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - public
  rules:
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == $CI_DEFAULT_BRANCH
  1. username.gitlab.io should be up and running, once GitLab CI finishes the deployment job,
  2. (Optional) If you wish to inspect the generated site assets (html, css, js, etc), they can be found in the job artifact.

Project page

If you prefer to have a project page on GitLab:

  1. Go to Settings > General > Advanced > Change path. Change the value to a name, so the website is available at username.gitlab.io/repository. It can be any name, like blog or hexo.
  2. Edit _config.yml, change the url: value to https://username.gitlab.io/repository.
  3. Commit and push.

Useful links