jekyll page build failure

Question

I'm new to web development, so please bear with me.

I'm trying to create a website for a group project using Github Pages, and I have forked this repository. I've made several changes, and the website was up and running. Today I updated some images and the website wouldn't build anymore. I tried reverting to the previous commit, but it wouldn't build either. I read the troubleshooting page, to no avail. I don't have any idea of what to do anymore, please help.

the error:

The page build failed with the following error:

Page build failed. For more information, see help[dot]github.com/articles/troubleshooting-github-pages-build-failures.

For information on troubleshooting Jekyll see:

help[dot]github.com/articles/troubleshooting-jekyll-builds

If you have any questions you can contact us by replying to this email.

I'm using the web interface of github (not ideal, I know). the repository is here.

Detrusion

Have you looked at the suggested page? Tried any of the troubleshooting they suggested? help.github.com/articles/troubleshooting-github-pages-builds Will help to narrow down the cause. – Lakshmi

FWIW, I cloned and built your site with jekyll on my own system without issue. Master branch? – Lakshmi

@CameronHurd yes, it's there: "I read the troubleshooting page, to no avail." I don't think of them apply, thanks ! – Detrusion

@CameronHurd thanks for the info! but now I'm not sure what you served because I've deleted the repository from GitHub and forked the original again (was it a Conferência Desafio Brasil thing?). do you know if there is a limit to GitHub Pages builds? I've been doing this for several days, I find it weird that the error sometimes says "unable to build page. Please try again later." – Detrusion

Ah - sorry. I don't know why the error would be intermittent. Cloned your repo again and all is still well. If you can find a way to replicate the problem each time, add those details and we'll make quick work of the bug. :) – Lakshmi

At the time you posted this, @githubstatus tweeted: twitter.com/githubstatus/status/789452827269664769 – Lakshmi

@CameronHurd Thanks a lot ! apparently it was indeed a problem on GitHub ! – Detrusion

Answer 1

The problem was caused by a GitHub server outage, not a problem in my code.

Anyone can check over at the github status website if their server is down. If it is, there isn't much you can do except wait until it is back up again...

Detrusion

Answer 2

The same error occured for me. But it wasn't caused by the Github server issue neither by me. If you are not using jekyll to build,then the issue was sometimes GitHub pages will mistake certain characters, specifically curly braces, as jekyll objects, tags, etc. causing your page build to fail.The solution is to create an empty file .nojekyll in your root folder.

And build it again. It solved mine. Hope it helps someone.

Crosier

Answer 3

I just ran into this same issue and I'd never even heard of jekyll and wasn't trying to use it. Apparently it's included in github.io by default, and it "Transforms your plain text into static websites and blogs" (reference).

After reading a number of these answers and visiting the linked doc about front matter, I realized what went wrong. I had a text file in my project folder with a "to do" list, and the top of the file started with:

---
TO DO
---

and that formatting (3 dashes & line break, text & line break, 3 dashes) just happened to correlate to the jekyll/YAML "front matter block", but TO DO wasn't valid data, so it failed.

So there are two different solutions that work:

1. Change the formatting in the text file to be more than 3 dashes in a row.
2. According to this link, you can "disable the Jekyll build process by creating an empty file called .nojekyll in the root of your publishing source".

The second option is better because you won't accidentally run into this issue again.

Also, if it isn't working, make sure the .nojekyll file is in your root folder. I had mine in username.github.io/mywebsite/ (which was the root of my website I was publishing), but that didn't work. It has to be in the root of your github project (in your username.github.io folder).

Countermarch

Answer 4

As you (and myself) discovered, GitHub suffered a major outage.

As a sidenote, all Jekyll pages require "Front Matter" if it's not included it won't build properly. It looks like below:

---
layout: Template
title: Web Development Page
---

More info here: https://jekyllrb.com/docs/frontmatter/

Rockhampton

Answer 5

If your problem is similar to mine you should've gotten an email similar to this.

<----------------------------------------------------------/> The page build failed for the master branch with the following error:

unable to build page. Please try again later.

For information on troubleshooting Jekyll see:

https://help.github.com/articles/troubleshooting-jekyll-builds

If you have any questions you can contact us by replying to this email. < ---------------------------------------------------------/>

While you can and should use the link provided by @cameronHurd - twitter.com/githubstatus/status/789452827269664769 and by @brunocuconato - https://status.github.com/ to see if there was an error during your build, you can also email [email protected] and they will be able to manually rebuild your site. Simply reply to the email you were sent and maybe include a link to your repo. I tried waiting until things were fixed and found this to be a much better solution. You can also reach out to GitHub on twitter but I'm not sure about the response speed on there.

Pentarchy

Answer 6

Please make sure that there is no issues with your data in your .md file. I had this problem and at the end there was an extra comma (,) in my tag list, because of that my build was keep on failing. You can see the complete answer here.

Neurogenic