Deploying your docs
A basic guide to deploying your docs to various hosting providers
GitHub Pages
If you host the source code for a project on GitHub, you can easily use GitHub Pages to host the documentation for your project. There are two basic types of GitHub Pages sites: Project Pages sites, and User and Organization Pages sites. They are nearly identical but have some important differences, which require a different work flow when deploying.
Project Pages
Project Pages sites are simpler as the site files get deployed to a branch
within the project repository (gh-pages by default). After you checkout the
primary working branch (usually master) of the git repository where you
maintain the source documentation for your project, run the following command:
mkdocs gh-deploy
That's it! Behind the scenes, MkDocs will build your docs and use the
ghp-import tool to commit them to the gh-pages branch and push the
gh-pages branch to GitHub.
Use mkdocs gh-deploy --help to get a full list of options available for the
gh-deploy command.
Be aware that you will not be able to review the built site before it is pushed
to GitHub. Therefore, you may want to verify any changes you make to the docs
beforehand by using the build or serve commands and reviewing the built
files locally.
!!! warning
You should never edit files in your pages repository by hand if you're using
the `gh-deploy` command because you will lose your work the next time you
run the command.
Organization and User Pages
User and Organization Pages sites are not tied to a specific project, and the
site files are deployed to the master branch in a dedicated repository named
with the GitHub account name. Therefore, you need working copies of two
repositories on our local system. For example, consider the following file
structure:
my-project/
mkdocs.yml
docs/
orgname.github.io/
After making and verifying updates to your project you need to change
directories to the orgname.github.io repository and call the
mkdocs gh-deploy command from there:
cd ../orgname.github.io/
mkdocs gh-deploy --config-file ../my-project/mkdocs.yml --remote-branch master
Note that you need to explicitly point to the mkdocs.yml configuration file as
it is no longer in the current working directory. You also need to inform the
deploy script to commit to the master branch. You may override the default
with the remote_branch configuration setting, but if you forget to change
directories before running the deploy script, it will commit to the master
branch of your project, which you probably don't want.
Be aware that you will not be able to review the built site before it is pushed
to GitHub. Therefore, you may want to verify any changes you make to the docs
beforehand by using the build or serve commands and reviewing the built
files locally.
!!! warning
You should never edit files in your pages repository by hand if you're using
the `gh-deploy` command because you will lose your work the next time you
run the command.
Custom Domains
GitHub Pages includes support for using a Custom Domain for your site. In
addition to the steps documented by GitHub, you need to take one additional step
so that MkDocs will work with your custom domain. You need to add a CNAME file
to the root of your docs_dir. The file must contain a single bare domain or
subdomain on a single line (see MkDocs' own CNAME file as an example). You may
create the file manually, or use GitHub's web interface to set up the custom
domain (under Settings / Custom Domain). If you use the web interface, GitHub
will create the CNAME file for you and save it to the root of your "pages"
branch. So that the file does not get removed the next time you deploy, you need
to copy the file to your docs_dir. With the file properly included in your
docs_dir, MkDocs will include the file in your built site and push it to your
"pages" branch each time you run the gh-deploy command.
If you are having problems getting a custom domain to work, see GitHub's documentation on Troubleshooting custom domains.
Read the Docs
Read the Docs offers free documentation hosting. You can import your docs using any major version control system, including Mercurial, Git, Subversion, and Bazaar. Read the Docs supports MkDocs out-of-the-box. Follow the instructions on their site to arrange the files in your repository properly, create an account and point it at your publicly hosted repository. If properly configured, your documentation will update each time you push commits to your public repository.
!!! note
To benefit from all of the [features] offered by Read the Docs, you will need
to use the [Read the Docs theme][theme] which ships with MkDocs. The various
themes which may be referenced in Read the Docs' documentation are Sphinx
specific themes and will not work with MkDocs.
Other Providers
Any hosting provider which can serve static files can be used to serve documentation generated by MkDocs. While it would be impossible to document how to upload the docs to every hosting provider out there, the following guidelines should provide some general assistance.
When you build your site (using the mkdocs build command), all of the files
are written to the directory assigned to the site_dir configuration option
(defaults to "site") in your mkdocs.yaml config file. Generally, you will
simply need to copy the contents of that directory to the root directory of your
hosting provider's server. Depending on your hosting provider's setup, you may
need to use a graphical or command line ftp, ssh or scp client to transfer
the files.
For example, a typical set of commands from the command line might look something like this:
mkdocs build
scp -r ./site user@host:/path/to/server/root
Of course, you will need to replace user with the username you have with your
hosting provider and host with the appropriate domain name. Additionally, you
will need to adjust the /path/to/server/root to match the configuration of
your hosts' file system.
See your host's documentation for specifics. You will likely want to search their documentation for "ftp" or "uploading site".
404 Pages
When MkDocs builds the documentation it will include a 404.html file in the build directory. This file will be automatically used when deploying to GitHub but only on a custom domain. Other web servers may be configured to use it but the feature won't always be available. See the documentation for your server of choice for more information.