The simplest GitHub workflow for deploying static sites

Ever since I learned about GitHub Actions, I'm trying to automate anything I can. This time I automated the deployment of my personal webpage. It's very easy, just checkout and upload the changes using rsync.

{% raw %}

name: Deploy my site

on:
  push:
    branches: [ master ]
  pull_request:
    branches: [ master ]

jobs:
  build_and_deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: GitHub Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v1
      - name: Rsync the build
        uses: Pendect/action-rsyncer@v1.1.0
        env:
          DEPLOY_KEY: ${{ secrets.DEPLOY_KEY }}
        with:
          options: '--exclude-from=.rsyncexclude --delete-excluded'
          src: .
          # Remote server and path. i.e user@server.com:/var/www/server.com/
          dest: ${{ secrets.RSYNC_DEST }}

{% endraw %}

Since we are using rsync, I could take advantage of the --exclude-from and --delete-excluded options to remove unwanted things on the server.

The secrets variable is provided by the GH action runner. To define the secrets, you need to go to Settings->Secrets on your repo. Read the documentation for the full details.

Credits

Cover Photo by Alvaro Reyes on Unsplash