Publishing your site¶

The great thing about hosting project documentation in a git repository is the ability to deploy it automatically when new changes are pushed. MkDocs makes this ridiculously simple.

GitHub Pages¶

If you're already hosting your code on GitHub, GitHub Pages is certainly the most convenient way to publish your project documentation. It's free of charge and pretty easy to set up.

with GitHub Actions¶

Using GitHub Actions you can automate the deployment of your project documentation. At the root of your repository, create a new GitHub Actions workflow, e.g. .github/workflows/ci.yml, and copy and paste the following contents:

Material for MkDocsInsiders


name: ci  You can change the name to your liking.
 

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - master  At some point, GitHub renamed master to main. If your default branch is named master, you can safely remove main, vice versa.
 

      - main
permissions:
  contents: write
jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Configure Git Credentials
        run: |
          git config user.name github-actions[bot]
          git config user.email 41898282+github-actions[bot]@users.noreply.github.com
      - uses: actions/setup-python@v5
        with:
          python-version: 3.x
      - run: echo "cache_id=$(date --utc '+%V')" >> $GITHUB_ENV  Store the cache_id environmental variable to access it later during cache key creation. The name is case-sensitive, so be sure to align it with ${{ env.cache_id }}.
  The --utc option makes sure that each workflow runner uses the same time zone.
 The %V format assures a cache update once a week.
 You can change the format to %F to have daily cache updates.
 
 You can read the manual page to learn more about the formatting options of the date command.
 

      - uses: actions/cache@v4
        with:
          key: mkdocs-material-${{ env.cache_id }}
          path: .cache  Some Material for MkDocs plugins use caching to speed up repeated builds, and store the results in the .cache directory.
 

          restore-keys: |
            mkdocs-material-
      - run: pip install mkdocs-material  This is the place to install further MkDocs plugins or Markdown extensions with pip to be used during the build:
 
pip install \
  mkdocs-material \
  mkdocs-awesome-pages-plugin \
  ...
 

      - run: mkdocs gh-deploy --force


name: ci
on:
  push:
    branches:
      - master
      - main
permissions:
  contents: write
jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    if: github.event.repository.fork == false
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Configure Git Credentials
        run: |
          git config user.name github-actions[bot]
          git config user.email 41898282+github-actions[bot]@users.noreply.github.com
      - uses: actions/setup-python@v5
        with:
          python-version: 3.x
      - run: echo "cache_id=$(date --utc '+%V')" >> $GITHUB_ENV
      - uses: actions/cache@v4
        with:
          key: mkdocs-material-${{ env.cache_id }}
          path: .cache  Some Material for MkDocs plugins use caching to speed up repeated builds, and store the results in the .cache directory.
 

          restore-keys: |
            mkdocs-material-
      - run: apt-get install pngquant  This step is only necessary if you want to use the built-in optimize plugin to automatically compress images.
 

      - run: pip install git+https://${GH_TOKEN}@github.com/squidfunk/mkdocs-material-insiders.git
      - run: mkdocs gh-deploy --force
env:
  GH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GH_TOKEN }}  Remember to set the GH_TOKEN repository secret to the value of your personal access token when deploying Insiders, which can be done using GitHub secrets.

Now, when a new commit is pushed to either the master or main branches, the static site is automatically built and deployed. Push your changes to see the workflow in action.

If the GitHub Page doesn't show up after a few minutes, go to the settings of your repository and ensure that the publishing source branch for your GitHub Page is set to gh-pages.

Your documentation should shortly appear at <username>.github.io/<repository>.

To publish your site on a custom domain, please refer to the MkDocs documentation.

with MkDocs¶

If you prefer to deploy your project documentation manually, you can just invoke the following command from the directory containing the mkdocs.yml file:


mkdocs gh-deploy --force

This will build your documentation and deploy it to a branch gh-pages in your repository. See this overview in the MkDocs documentation for more information. For a description of the arguments, see the documentation for the command.

GitLab Pages¶

If you're hosting your code on GitLab, deploying to GitLab Pages can be done by using the GitLab CI task runner. At the root of your repository, create a task definition named .gitlab-ci.yml and copy and paste the following contents:

Material for MkDocsInsiders


pages:
  stage: deploy
  image: python:latest
  script:
    - pip install mkdocs-material
    - mkdocs build --site-dir public
  cache:
    key: ${CI_COMMIT_REF_SLUG}
    paths:
      - .cache/ Some Material for MkDocs plugins use caching to speed up repeated builds, and store the results in the .cache directory.

  artifacts:
    paths:
      - public
  rules:
    - if: '$CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == $CI_DEFAULT_BRANCH'


pages:
  stage: deploy
  image: python:latest
  script:  Remember to set the GH_TOKEN repository secret to the value of your personal access token when deploying Insiders, which can be done using masked custom variables.
 

    - pip install git+https://${GH_TOKEN}@github.com/squidfunk/mkdocs-material-insiders.git
    - mkdocs build --site-dir public
  cache:
    key: ${CI_COMMIT_REF_SLUG}
    paths:
      - .cache/  Some Material for MkDocs plugins use caching to speed up repeated builds, and store the results in the .cache directory.
 

  artifacts:
    paths:
      - public
  rules:
    - if: '$CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == $CI_DEFAULT_BRANCH'

Now, when a new commit is pushed to the default branch (typically master or main), the static site is automatically built and deployed. Commit and push the file to your repository to see the workflow in action.

Your documentation is not published under <username>.gitlab.io/<repository> by default since GitLab 17.4 ¹. However, if you prefer a cleaner URL structure, such as <username>.gitlab.io/<repository>, you need to adjust your configuration.

To switch from a unique domain to the traditional URL structure, follow these steps:

Locate Your Repository
Go to Settings › Pages in the repository menu.
In the Unique domain settings section, uncheck the box labeled
Use unique domain.
Click Save changes to apply the update.

Now you can reach your documentation under <username>.gitlab.io/<repository>.

Other¶

Since we can't cover all possible platforms, we rely on community contributed guides that explain how to deploy websites built with Material for MkDocs to other providers:

Release notes for Gitlab 17.4 ↩