Automating Blog Deployment with GitHub Actions

In this post, I'll show you how I automated the deployment of this blog using GitHub Actions. We'll cover setting up continuous integration to check markdown files and automatically deploy to GitHub Pages.

Why Automation?

Automation helps ensure:

1. Consistent quality through linting
2. Automatic deployment on merges
3. No manual deployment steps
4. Version control and review process

Setting Up GitHub Actions

Here's how we set up our GitHub Actions workflow:

name: CI
on:
  push:
    branches: [ main ]
  pull_request:
    branches: [ main ]

jobs:
  lint:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - name: Lint Markdown files
        uses: DavidAnson/markdownlint-cli2-action@v15

  deploy:
    needs: lint
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/main'
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-python@v5
      - run: pip install mkdocs-material
      - run: mkdocs gh-deploy --force

Results

Now, every time we push to main:

1. Markdown files are checked for consistency
2. The site is automatically built and deployed
3. Changes are live within minutes

This automation has made maintaining the blog much easier!