GitHub pages are not updating

Question

I'm running into a weird issue with GitHub pages. I pushed a new commit to my personal pages page maltzj.github.io, but the new article isn't showing up there. When I execute the server locally, a post lives at localhost:4000/posts/the-price-of-inconsistent-code/. However, when I go to http://maltzj.github.io/posts/the-price-of-inconsistent-code I get a 404. I also added a new file which should live at http://maltz.github.io/test.html, but that also throws a 404.

Everything builds and runs locally. My Git repository is up to date, and there is nothing on the GitHub status page about problems with builds, so I'm at a little bit of a loss about where to go with this. How can I get my page to update with new content that I add?

For reference, the location of the repository which backs my page is http://github.com/maltzj/maltzj.github.io

Stabile

"Are you trying to publish one? It may take up to ten minutes until your page is available." – Atalaya

I know that, but the publishing commits have been in the repo for > 5 hours and not shown up. Personal pages deploy via master correct? – Stabile

for me it was because the browser use cached data(old styles) so i opend other brwser – Metamorphism

It was the browser for me. Opening firefox had it working fine. – Kingkingbird

Using Ctrl+Shift+R to hard reload the page helped me, as it was cache data used by the browser initially. – Coff

You can trigger a rebuild on an empty commit. git commit --allow-empty -m "Trigger rebuild" and then git push. ref: stackoverflow.com/a/45907768 – Goy

Answer 1

I had an empty CNAME file. Check that if you're having a similar issue.

Stabile

Would you please expand on this a bit? What did you have to change to make it work? Or did you have to remove a CNAME file that was there? Thanks! – Crowder

I had to make sure the CNAME file contained a line with the domain I wanted to be built. – Catastrophism

Answer 2

None of these solutions solved it for me. The solution was to edit the index.html file in the GitHub website.

The website then updates on the web as expected.

Fantastically

same for me. Only changing one line into index.html made it "load" the "true" index.html and not all the previous commit. – Barajas

GitHub Pages wasn't seeing an image I pushed in my last commit. I had to edit index.html (which uses the image), just by changing some white space, in order to get GitHub Pages to start serving the image. I suspect it doesn't rebuild unless an HTML page changes. – Agnusago

I just added one space on GitHub in index.html and it worked. Weird issue. – Wiesbaden

That make sense, this solution works for me.. In my case, it was due to my app being an SPA, where updates are only made in Javascript, and not from index.html. Then again, I think the filenames have md5sum (or something) and should change if the file changes, so it should update the index.html script tag as well. – Chicalote

What do mean by "edit the index.html file into GitHub website"? – Thwart

Hi @PeterSchorn. You should go to your repo into Gihtub page, logged in, find your file there. There's an icon to edit (I guess it's a pen) your file. You can add some spaces, or remove others, just to make it difference from previously. Then commit it. – Fantastically

I did not make the change on the GitHub website but rather in my local version. I made a trivial change, committed, and pushed. It was then updated. – Psychoanalysis

It isn't clear what actual change needs to be made. Please make it explicit in the answer. – Pallid

Answer 3

Go to your index.html file through your site (example.github.io/index.html) and then reload the page. Then you can go back to (example.github.io) and it should have updated. You can do the same with the master.css file, etc.

If it doesn't work, try reloading (github.com/example/example.github.io/[blob/master/]index.html) instead and it will have updated.

Cornerstone

That's the way to do it. Thanks! 👍 – Norwood

example.github.io/index.html worked in my case. The problem was, that I changed my github's username. Then renamed the repository. Then when I tried to browse the webpage, it showed a 404 error. So, thanks! – Slater

Answer 4

For others, also check the dates of your posts. I just had this problem. I'm at UTC+11 and I'm pretty sure the server is at UTC. Thus if I date my posts with my local time, the server thinks they are in the future and won't build them. Using UTC avoided this for me.

As mentioned by joao cenoura in the comments below:

• you can tell jekyll to show "future" posts by adding future: true to your _config.yml
• and/or add timezone: TIMEZONE to specify your timezone.

See https://jekyllrb.com/docs/configuration/ for more info.

Preexist

Hooray! This was the problem for me. I typo'ed a post name and made it "2016-04-14" instead of "2016-03-14". It built just fine locally, but on Github, it didn't show up. No warning, just no page. Thanks! – Barragan

Same issue. I'm at UTC+8. I made a post with today as its date, pushed and nothing happened. Then I changed the date of the post and made it yesterday, the post got published really quick! – Kiely

Same for me on UTC+1. Haven't tried yet, but you can tell jekyll to show "future" posts by adding future: true to your _config.yml. There's also a TZ option. Reference: jekyllrb.com/docs/configuration – Fellah

Adding future: true to _config.yml worked no need to update timezone – Obscure

Answer 5

I had this fault today with a static page - the cause was actually a service failure at GitHub Pages itself. You can check for service messages at https://www.githubstatus.com/.

Osbourne

I tore out nearly my whole site trying to reduce a code problem - turns out github has had a huge page build backlog happening since yesterday - that's almost 24 hours. (Github should note the build status page link on their Troubleshooting page. I only found the status page because of a 404 error which included a link at the bottom.) – Partook

Thank you:) Today I got "Investigating - Currently investigating increase in queue backlogs affecting Pages builds and some webhooks deliveries." – Caldeira

Yeah me too! @Thuan. it's sucks! – Bless

This happened! -2021 – Bobble

Answer 6

I had the problem of having an unverified email. The update worked for the first time, but it failed after that. A verified email is needed to trigger a GitHub pages build. Also a deploy key cannot be used for this, as it won't trigger a build.

Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20140712011932/https://help.github.com/articles/troubleshooting-github-pages-build-failures/

Disclaimer: this was the case in 2014. Don't know if it's still required.

Let

I also had the very same problem of an unverified email. – Jaques

This is what helped me. It's also the only mention of this solution I could find after about an hour of looking. – Wilbert

Deploy key won't trigger the build!?!? WTF. Thank you, upvoted. – Bokbokhara

The link is broken ("Ooops! It looks like this page doesn't exist."). – Synapsis

@PeterMortensen replaced with web archive link, though don't really know if the information is relevant anymore – Let

Answer 7

I had an unclosed <a> tag which caused the build to be pending forever. Fixing that solved the issue.

It makes sense that GitHub would verify your links.

Harness

Yep... I had a missing space between the href="" and target="" – Transeunt

Answer 8

I got it to work. Mine was a simple problem. It was a browser cache problem.

I opened my link on a different browser and it showed me the updated push.

Misdeem

Upvoting this because it was exactly why mine was showign an outdated version . Use CTRL + F5 or hold CTRL and click the browser's refresh button. – Cyndi

Same here. I had to open the console F12 and right click on the top left reload button and choose Empty cache and hard reload – Voroshilovgrad

Same with me... – Retaretable

Answer 9

I know this might sound simple, but make certain you are on the right branch and in the right file.

In my case, I made a GitHub page and tried to commit from my local repository on the master branch. Also, I was updating my filename instead of index.html. These were my errors. I had to switch to the GitHub page branch and update in the index.html commit, push and then everything worked fine.

Endocardium

Funny. This answer inspired me to reassess my assumptions and reminded me that I needed to re-build from source. – Qktp

Thank you so much! My problem was that I was making changes on my main branch but not deploying to the gh-pages branch. If you have set up github pages, there is usually a command in your config file that allows you to deploy. – Rhodolite

Answer 10

In my case, none of above solutions works. Finally I find out the reason is: there is "relative_permalinks" option in my _config.yml. This option is recently deprecated in Jekyll 3.0.

Refer to: https://help.github.com/articles/removing-relative-permalinks/

Eladiaelaeoptene

Answer 11

In my case the problem was because of my repository was private. After I made it public, the problem has gone.

The weird part of story is that I was able to create private repository and use GitHub pages with it. I did it in accordance with the official guide (http://take.ms/p2SS7). It worked fine for about 9 commits, but on the 10-th it became broken.

Tragacanth

Thank you. My issue was that GitHub Pages did not auto-deploy at all. I had tried multiple ways like empty cache, pushed an empty commit, etc. but it didn't work. Changing from private to public triggered the auto-deployment immediately. – Wellmannered

Thanks my issue resolved. Just you have to public for a while. When its updated you can make private again – Acidulate

Answer 12

For me, I just waited ~5 minutes, and it was updated.

If someone has made the branch gh-pages from scratch (manually) the problem is that you need a file call params.json to make it work.

I don't have this params.json file, but it still works...

Accalia

You can see if Github still needs time building your site or if it failed in the commits list of your repo. – Ioannina

Answer 13

In my case, it happened to be that I mentioned a relative path to refer to an image, something like - ./test.png.

It seems that it's not allowed, and it may be a security issue or what. Whatever, if you've done something like that, remove it and refer to it as test.png.

Errol

Same for me: I had a relative path in an "<a href...>" – Sofer

Answer 14

I ran into the same mysterious issue today. I pushed some new code to my github.io-repository, but the changes did not show up on the corresponding webpage. I inspected the page and did not see the new code in the source. I solved the issue by doing a hard reload. On Chrome, you can do a hard reload by opening up Dev Tools and right-clicking on the refresh-button and choosing Hard Reload.

Bischoff

Or in chrome you can "Ctrl+Shift+R" for hard reload – Coff

Answer 15

Please refer to the Jekyll troubleshooting website, as there are multiple error sources: Troubleshooting Jekyll build errors for GitHub Pages sites

In my case a German umlaut ("ö") in a Markdown file caused the problem.

Elmiraelmo

Answer 16

In my case, I forgot to define kramdown in _config.yaml

# Build settings
markdown: kramdown

This was caused when I was converting from a theme without to a theme with the kramdown requirement.

Favourable

Answer 17

1. Make sure your run npm run deploy

2. Clear your browser cache.

Walz

Answer 18

At the bottom right of the github project page there is an Environments section as shown below:

Clicking github-pages with show the current status of the deployment.

After a new commit the workflow can take a while to complete and will display in Pending status.

Apparently, even after the status turns back to Active it can take some minutes for the actual changes to be seen live, so there appears to be a delay between the status change on the project page and the actual content refresh and whatever cache flushing might be happening in the github backend.

From project Settings > Pages at the top of the page you can also see the status and time of the last deployment, e.g. something like:

_{Last deployed by user2030 33 minutes ago}.

Hovering over the minutes will show the full timestamp.

Tommyetommyrot

Answer 19

In my case, after trial and error on some solutions here, what fixed it was adding the encoding to the _config file like this

encoding: UTF-8

More troubleshooting options here

Immedicable

Answer 20

For me it was an issue with not properly having a .gitmodules file.

I was able to troubleshoot in the settings tab of my repository, under the GitHub pages section, which indicates build issues and was helpful for troubleshooting.

Lungfish

Answer 21

Oddly (and simply) enough I created a new branch, made that branch the "default" branch and pushed from there.

This worked for me.

Bingo

Answer 22

My GitHub Pages was turned off under the Settings tab of the repository.

I don't remember turning it off, but there it was, and turning it back on was the fix.

Soupspoon

Answer 23

In the repository settings, make sure the GitHub Pages is currently being built from the gh-pages branch.

Erbium

Answer 24

In my case, my problem was after git push my GitHub file was updating but not showing my website on GitHub pages.

Note: I was creating Website by React

Also, on the HTML project, I faced the same problem. In that case, I just did first of all git pull and then git status | git add . | git commit -m"adding some content" | and git push. It worked for me.

But in the React project, it didn't work. I run this again on my cmd npm run deploy then my React web application is showing on GitHub pages.

My suggestion is to try everything showing on this post comments. Because the solution to this problem is not one.

Clein

With react you should first build the project with npm run build or yarn build and then push to github pages build/ folder. Or you can access it with link yournickname.github.io/yourproject/build path (If you remove build/ from .gitignore) – Fumatorium

For showing react website on GitHub pages I followed this method github.com/gitname/react-gh-pages and it worked. – Clein

Answer 25

In my case I left an empty parameter, url, in _config.yaml.

After I've specified url: example.github.io everything started to work.

Posset

This was really helpful – Shatzer

Answer 26

I had this problem this week and no solution worked. I don't use Jekyll, only pure static HTML. It just sat three days refusing to update.

Here is what I had to do to get it to publish again.

• Make a snapshot branch from master.
• Reset the master branch to the last commit that is live. (Commits tab, green checkmarks indicate published commits)
• Make a new commit with a smoke test. I made an HTML comment I could grep.
• Force push master.
• Check results curl https://example.com | grep SMOKETEST
• Reset master again, removing the smoke test.
• Cherry-pick each commit from the snapshot branch you need to get your unpublished changes back into master (cherry-picking gives the commits new ids/hashes, avoiding the risk of anything having cached them from before).
• Force push master again.
• Now you should get green checkmarks and published updates.

Note: It could be enough to force push to remove the commits that are stuck and getting them back again. The smoke test is almost certainly not required. Cherry-picking may not be required.

Spector

Answer 27

Github doesn't publish to github pages for me if I edit and commit files directly on github web site.

However, if I edit file locally and commit with GitHub Desktop, then change is published to site within seconds.

BTW, my email is verified, so this shouldn't be an issue. And I'm using same account.

Cohla

Answer 28

Solution worked for me for an app created using create-react-app :

1. Go to GitHub Pages section under repository settings
2. Change source from gh-pages branch to master branch
3. Wait and check your custom domain website, should show master branch README.md file
4. Now change the source back to gh-pages
5. Wait couple minutes, now latest changes reflected on custom domain website

I had tried different solutions, none worked. Like a new commit, an empty commit, browser cache clear, wait for 5 - 10 minutes, delete gh-pages branch and push again, edit CNAME, create a new CNAME under on master branch etc

Note: My app has no _config.yaml file, no jekyll. I'm using custom domain with https (google domains). gh-page branch auto created by package.json script deploy: "gh-pages -d deploy"

Nicolenicolea

Answer 29

In my case, I had made a couple of changes in the index.html and style.css files but those changes were not reflecting on the Github pages. But when I updated the Readme file by adding one line the Page got updated. Maybe you can try this, as it might work for you just like it did for me.

Worship

same. Tried to update only index.html several times and no update. After I updated README.md (or delete it) - instant update – Expertize

Answer 30

I made an honest effort to read through all 43 answers. Twice. Astonishingly, not one answer informs to do, what I only stumbled upon by randomly clicking different things in the github dashboard of my repo. Don't click on Settings. Click on Actions. There you will see what actually happened to the workflow when jekyll attempted to build the web page. You can click on the workflow, which will show a red 'x' mark because it failed, and see the complete text output to stdout. Including informative error messages like in my case: /usr/local/bundle/gems/jekyll-3.9.2/lib/jekyll/theme.rb:84:in `rescue in gemspec': The slate theme could not be found. (Jekyll::Errors::MissingDependencyException)

Dupuy

Answer 31

If you are deploying some simple HTML codes, try this:

First, go to Actions > Deploy static content to Page:

Then, click the Run workflow:

Wanonah

Answer 32

My site failed to deploy today because of a transient failure in the GitHub Pages deploy actions. The action needed to be re-run through the Actions tab for the new version of my site to appear.

The story:

I pushed new content, on a site that's purely static and doesn't use Jekyll. After many fruitless Shift-Ctrl-R reloads on Chrome, I decided to investigate. I first visited Settings→Pages for the site’s repository, and saw that no recent deploy had taken place.

Why not, I wondered? After double-checking that my push had really gone through, I clicked the word “deployed”, and was taken to a GitHub Action that had failed!

Since the error message ECONNRESET looked like a generic network error internal to GitHub’s network, and not any problem with my site, I clicked the “Re-run” button in the upper right and asked GitHub Actions to re-run the failed task. Within a few seconds it had been re-tried and had succeeded!

Lessons:

1. Deploys are vulnerable to transient errors.
2. Deploys these days happen as normal GitHub Actions that you can inspect.
3. The deploys can be re-tried.

Chloride

Answer 33

If someone has made the branch gh-pages from scratch (manually) the problem is that you need a file call params.json to make it work.

This is an example of that file :

{
  "name": "nameOfProyect",
  "tagline": "name of proyect",
  "body": "### Welcome to GitHub Pages.\r\nThis automatic page generator is the easiest way to create beautiful pages for all of your projects. Author your page content here using GitHub Flavored Markdown, select a template crafted by a designer, and publish. After your page is generated, you can check out the new branch:\r\n\r\n```\r\n$ cd your_repo_root\/repo_name\r\n$ git fetch origin\r\n$ git checkout gh-pages\r\n```\r\n\r\nIf you're using the GitHub for Mac, simply sync your repository and you'll see the new branch.\r\n\r\n### Designer Templates\r\nWe've crafted some handsome templates for you to use. Go ahead and continue to layouts to browse through them. You can easily go back to edit your page before publishing. After publishing your page, you can revisit the page generator and switch to another theme. Your Page content will be preserved if it remained markdown format.\r\n\r\n### Rather Drive Stick?\r\nIf you prefer to not use the automatic generator, push a branch named `gh-pages` to your repository to create a page manually. In addition to supporting regular HTML content, GitHub Pages support Jekyll, a simple, blog aware static site generator written by our own Tom Preston-Werner. Jekyll makes it easy to create site-wide headers and footers without having to copy them across every page. It also offers intelligent blog support and other advanced templating features.\r\n\r\n### Authors and Contributors\r\nYou can @mention a GitHub username to generate a link to their profile. The resulting `<a>` element will link to the contributor's GitHub Profile. For example: In 2007, Chris Wanstrath (@defunkt), PJ Hyett (@pjhyett), and Tom Preston-Werner (@mojombo) founded GitHub.\r\n\r\n### Support or Contact\r\nHaving trouble with Pages? Check out the documentation at https:\/\/help.github.com\/pages or contact [email protected] and we\u2019ll help you sort it out.\r\n",
  "google": "",
  "note": "Don't delete this file! It's used internally to help with page regeneration."
}

Kalman

Answer 34

In my case it was incorrect kramdown syntax. My code was

  {% highlight %}
  lorem lipsum
 {% endhighlight %}

Apparently you must tell kramdown the language:

  {% highlight html %}
  lorem lipsum
 {% endhighlight %}

Abwatt

Answer 35

In my case there were two problems (one "pebcak" and then a more valid one).

I had two email addresses set up in GitHub and I was checking the non-primary email for build error messages (to manage emails: log in to GitHub, click on user menu on the top right, select Settings and then "Emails" from the left menu -build error messages will arrive at the primary email set).

Once I got to see the error messages I found out I had added a description, including a ":" character in my _config.yaml and since this is the character used to separate key,value pairs, it was preventing the site to build.

Idiophone

Answer 36

In my case, I had another file with the same permalink to the page that was not refreshing the content. Pay attention to that.

Amosamount

Answer 37

I used git commit -am "blah" and forgot that only my navigation links in _data/navigation.yaml were changed, and the new page.md that I created was not added to the working tree, therefore showing me a 404 error when I clicked on the link in the navigation tree.

Check, double check!

Isolative

Answer 38

Check your build status of gh-pages in settings tab.

Your site is having problems building: Unable to build page.

If you are using github_token, it might not have permission to build the gh-pages so you might see a warning in the settings tab. That's why editing index.html might work. In this case use access_token or ssh based commit to automatically push and build gh-pages.

Hylo

Answer 39

Go to

Settings / GitHub Pages / Source

and change it to

None (Disable GitHub Pages)

Let the system to save your changes. After that, change

Settings / GitHub Pages / Source

again to its original value.

Armandarmanda

Answer 40

If you're using the gh-pages command to publish, it could be a caching issue with gh-pages itself. See the bottom of the gh-pages docs:

However, note that those instructions are faulty!

To delete your gh-pages cache, either run node node_modules/gh-pages/bin/gh-pages-clean or manually delete the .cache directory in node_modules/gh-pages.

I've submitted an issue to correct the instructions here: https://github.com/tschaub/gh-pages/issues/367

Belding

Answer 41

I had the same issue with a very basic project. A hard reload [ctrl + shift + r] solved this for me.

Mine was just a basic project which used plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The above method may or may not work for advanced projects.

Cleareyed

Answer 42

I tried almost all the answers, tried editing index.html etc.

My mistake was, I was not building and deploying, so I have added build and deploy steps in my npm script. If you are using React application than directly copy paste this or just take the code.

These are my build scripts:

  "scripts": {
    "predeploy": "npm run build",
    "deploy": "gh-pages -b master -d build",
    "start": "react-scripts start",
    "build": "react-scripts build",
    "test": "react-scripts test",
    "eject": "react-scripts eject"
  }

Once you are done with the changes, and your application is running fine using npm start. Follow these steps:

Step 1: run the command npm run build.

If everything is good then, you will get the message: the build folder is ready to deploy

Step 2: run the command npm run deploy

You will get the message like this: published.

Step 3: Refresh your app: like https://kushalseth.github.io. Not mandatory, but do commit and push all the changes for reference.

PS: If you are facing this issues like 404 then check this answer: React Github Pages Deploy ERR_ABORTED 404 (Not Found)

Grinder

Answer 43

I had the same problem. In my case I have replaced my avatar with a new one. Previous had extension "jpeg" and new one "jpg", so I renamed file to have the same extension as previous one. I waited one day but changes did not appear. I noticed that the build failed. I renamed file to have its correct extension and changed a html-file corresponding. Build was ready in 2 minutes.

Inkwell

Answer 44

For my personal website, I am using A Github Pages template for academic websites..

In my ._config.yaml file I have included an additional online link to a website where I have an academic profile. And this was totally unnecessary. And this link was blocking all other updates on my website. Since I removed this link in my ._config.yaml file, my all other Github pages were updated.

Shatzer

Answer 45

In my case I had an incorrect tag closure i.e. <tag> when it should have been </tag>

Strange that my build had zero errors and my HTML page had all the content right until the point it found the incorrect tag. So I guess you could manually check all your tags to resolve such an issue.

Pol

Answer 46

I had the same issue, but in my case CNAME contained the correct domain name.

I think the problem had something to do with repository renaming I did before... The online name was different from local, although there were no issues on pushing and online files got updated - the live version did not.

After deleting the repository from the local machine and cloning it from GitHub again, the problem got solved.

Lateritious

Answer 47

Make sure to clear your web history and have a go at it again. My problem was solved with that itself.

Lenardlenci

Answer 48

In a word:

Github pages doesn't refresh if no change is made on index.html.

So make sure to update index.html on every push.

Sikko