Draft

don't follow this guide right now, it needs cleanup

I'm going to use ruhoh as an example, but if you're already using jekyll, octopress, or another ruby static blog, you'll probably know what you need to change.

Rename master to old-master

git branch -m master old-master

Created a gh-pages branch

You only need to do this step once (per blog or repository)

If you were following along with my previous tutorial then you'll need to get into your blog folder which should be named something like username.github.com.

pushd ~/username.github.com

Check the status of your current branch (it should be clean)

git status

You'll need to git add and git commit any files that you haven't yet.

Note which branch your on (it'll be the one with a * by it, probably be blog or master)

git branch

Then you'll need to create an empty gh-pages branch (it's a special branch name only used by github)

# create the branch as an orphan
git checkout --orphan gh-pages

# delete all the files (I hope you were clean in the status up above)
git rm -rf .

For starters, we'll just add a file that ignores the compiled/ directory. (if you're using jekyll or octopress you might want to change that name to public, site, or whatever)

# edit the file .gitignore and add the line compiled
echo "compiled" >> .gitignore

# add it to the repository and commit the change
git add .gitignore
git commit -m "ignore the compiled directory"

# copy it back to github (assume it's aliased as the origin)
git push origin -u gh-pages

And after all that hubabaloo, it's safe to switch back to your normal branch. For example, if it was blog you would do this:

git checkout blog

Update GitHub Pages

Each and every time you add a new blog article (and you've committed and pushed changes) you need to recompile and push the compiled site to gh-pages.

pushd ~/username.github.com
git checkout blog
bundle exec ruhoh compile

# must be clean working directory
git status

# if this fails, you need to add and commit files first, then try again
# (or you didn't follow the one-time instructions above)
git checkout gh-pages

# this is a case where the trailing / and ./ are not optional
rsync -a compiled/ ./
rm -rf compiled/

# this is a rare case where adding everything at once is appropriate
git status
git add .
git status
git commit -m "updated compiled site"
git status

git push origin gh-pages


git branch master
git push origin -u master

git checkout blog

Hosting your blog on github pages

This set of commands is completely optional, but since we're already on github and all I thought it would be appropriate to give the hosting instructions.

rm -rf compiled/
bundle exec ruhoh compile

git checkout gh-pages
rsync -a compiled/* ./
rm -rf compiled/

echo "blog.example.com" > CNAME

git add .
git commit -m "hosting an empty blog on gh-pages"
git push origin -u gh-pages

git checkout blog

Within about 15 minutes you will get an e-mail notifying you that your page has been built and you are can access your blog at username.github.com. As soon as you set the CNAME record for blog.example.com to username.github.com, It will also be visible there.