GitHub Pages

GitHub pages are great, but they will only serve files from a branch in your git repository named gh-pages. (I wish there was at least an option to say “Serve GitHub Pages from: [x] Master [ ] gh-pages”, but the last time I wished for something from GitHub they laughed in my face. For now I will be content that they don’t require using Jekyll to render your gh-pages.)

Easy fix, though: s/master/gh-pages/. Git translation follows:

git branch -m master gh-pages
# Open up .git/config and remove the [branch] section
git push -u origin gh-pages

GitHub should now have your gh-pages branch, but it still thinks master is the primary branch. On github.com, find your repo, click “Settings” on the right bar, and change the “Default branch” dropdown to gh-pages.

# delete the remote branch (wasn't possible when default)
git push origin :master

And that’s it!