This guide assumes you have a recent version of Node.js and Jekyll installed already.

Deploying a Jekyll project

If you haven’t already, the first thing you’ll want to is install Surge using npm:

npm install -g surge

Now you have what you need to qucikly get your Jekyll site online.

Create a new Jekyll site

First, find and existing Jekyll project you have, or create a new project from your terminal:

# Create a new Jekyll site in the current directory
jekyll new ./

You can now visit it in your browser using the jekyll serve command:

jekyll serve
# Server address: http://localhost:4000/
# Server running... press ctrl-c to stop.

Now you have the basic starter site running.

Compiling your Jekyll site

Next, you can build your Jekyll site into flat HTML, CSS & JavaScript files.

jekyll build

Now, your source code has been flattened into a _site/ directory. These will get be re-built each time you run jekyll build—they’re also the files you’ll want to publish to the web.

Deploying your Jekyll site

You can publish the _site/ directory to the web with the following command:

surge _site/

You’ll be prompted to login or signup if you haven’t already. Then, you’ll be given a random subdomain. You can override this with something of your choosing, like example-jekyll.surge.sh:

surge _site/

       email: you@example.com
project path: ~/Sites/jekyll-project/_site
      domain: (random-suggestion.surge.sh) example-jekyll.surge.sh

After hitting enter, you should get a message confirming your site is online:

Success! Project is published and running at example-jekyll.surge.sh

Nice work, your site is now online.