You can build and deploy a Hugo site as a GitHub Pages project or personal/organizational site directly from a repository and automate the whole process using GitHub Action Workflow.

GitHub provides free and fast static hosting over SSL for personal, organization, or project pages directly from a GitHub repository via its GitHub Pages service and automating development workflows and build with GitHub Actions.

We’re only going to cover builds from the main branch in this page. Therefore, ensure that you are working on the main branch. If necessary, you may create it based on your default branch. When the Action builds your site, the contents of the destination directory will be automatically pushed to the GitHub Pages site, ready to be used for serving.

To configure your site to publish with GitHub Actions:

• On GitHub, navigate to your site’s repository.
• Under your repository name, click Settings.
• In the “Code and automation” section of the sidebar, click Pages.
• Under “Build and deployment”, under “Source”, select GitHub Actions.

GitHub will suggest several starter workflows. If you already have a workflow to publish your site, you can skip this step. Otherwise, create a file in .github/workflows/pages.yml containing the following content:

# Workflow for building and deploying a Hugo site to GitHub Pages
name: Deploy Hugo site to Pages

on:
  # Runs on pushes targeting the default branch
  push:
    branches: ["main"]

  # Allows you to run this workflow manually from the Actions tab
  workflow_dispatch:

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

# Allow one concurrent deployment
concurrency:
  group: "pages"
  cancel-in-progress: true

# Default to bash
defaults:
  run:
    shell: bash

jobs:
  # Build job
  build:
    name: build
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    env:
      HUGO_VERSION: "0.99.0"
    steps:
      - name: Install Hugo CLI
        run: |
          wget -O ${{ runner.temp }}/hugo.deb https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/releases/download/v${HUGO_VERSION}/hugo_extended_${HUGO_VERSION}_Linux-64bit.deb \
          && sudo dpkg -i ${{ runner.temp }}/hugo.deb
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v3
        with:
          submodules: recursive
      - name: Setup Pages
        id: pages
        uses: actions/configure-pages@v1
      - name: Build with Hugo
        run: |
          hugo \
            --cleanDestinationDir \
            --minify \
            --baseURL ${{ steps.pages.outputs.base_url }}
      - name: Upload artifact
        uses: actions/upload-pages-artifact@v1
        if: ${{ success() && github.ref == 'refs/heads/main' }}
        with:
          path: ./public/

  # Deployment job
  deploy:
    name: deploy
    environment:
      name: github-pages
      url: ${{ steps.deployment.outputs.page_url }}
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    needs: build
    if: ${{ github.ref == 'refs/heads/main' }}
    steps:
      - name: Deploy to GitHub Pages
        id: deployment
        uses: actions/deploy-pages@v1
        if: ${{ success() }}

Resources:

• Starter Workflows, GitHub Actions
• GitHub Pages: Custom GitHub Actions Workflows (beta), GitHub Blog
• Host on GitHub, Hugo Docs