Deploying a static Nextjs app on Github Pages for free

The problem

We are refreshing our axlessoft.com website.

It was Wordpress before and but it was a bit broken because it was not updated in a while.

We decided to do a static Nextjs website:

• Static because there is nothing dynamic, it is a portfolio website afterall
• Modern. We can use Tailwind to create a nice design
• It’s free to host

Setup

“Hey, [insert LLM name], build a nextjs portfolio website. Make no mistakes”

Hosting on Github pages

1. We go to our repo
2. Go to Settings -> Pages -> "Build and deployment" -> Source and change it to GitHub Actions

Now for the “coding” part: I use pnpm, so we need to set it up a bit differnetly than this very useful post: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/191018#discussioncomment-16366710

Create .github/workflows/deploy.yml

name: Deploy Next.js site to Pages

on:
  push:
    branches: ["main"] # Ensure this matches your default branch name
  workflow_dispatch: # Allows you to run this workflow manually from the Actions tab

# Sets permissions of the GITHUB_TOKEN to allow deployment to GitHub Pages
permissions:
  contents: read
  pages: write
  id-token: write

# Allow only one concurrent deployment, skipping runs queued between the run in-progress and latest queued.
concurrency:
  group: "pages"
  cancel-in-progress: false

jobs:
  # Build job
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Setup pnpm
        uses: pnpm/action-setup@v4
        with:
          version: 10

      - name: Setup Node
        uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: "20"
          cache: "pnpm"

      - name: Install dependencies
        run: pnpm install --frozen-lockfile

      - name: Build with Next.js
        env:
          BASE_PATH: /axlessoft_website
        run: pnpm run build

      - name: Upload artifact
        uses: actions/upload-pages-artifact@v3
        with:
          path: ./out # Next.js exports static files to the 'out' directory by default

  # Deployment job
  deploy:
    environment:
      name: github-pages
      url: $
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    needs: build
    steps:
      - name: Deploy to GitHub Pages
        id: deployment
        uses: actions/deploy-pages@v4

And add output: "export", to next.config.ts

import type { NextConfig } from "next";

const nextConfig: NextConfig = {
  output: "export",
  /* config options here */
};

export default nextConfig;

Adding a custom domain

We want to use our own domain:

1. Verifying the domain
2. Configuring the domain
3. Add it to the repo: Settings -> Pages -> Custom Domains

It could give an error “NotServedByPagesError”, but you should just wait. It takes time for DNS records to propagate