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 -> Shared Runners.

  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. Add .gitlab-ci.yml file to your repo (alongside _config.yml & package.json) with the following content:

    image: node:10-alpine # use nodejs v10 LTS
    cache:
      paths:
        - node_modules/

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

    pages:
      script:
        - hexo generate
      artifacts:
        paths:
          - public
      only:
        - master

  5. username.gitlab.io should be up and running, once GitLab CI finishes the deployment job,

  6. (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/name. It can be any name, like blog or hexo.
  2. Edit _config.yml, change the root: value from "" to "name".
  3. Commit and push.

Useful links