Publish Ghost CMS from a private GitHub repo to a public Github Pages repo

build-and-deploy.yaml

name: Run Ghost, generate static content, and publish to github pages

on:
  push:
    branches: [main]

jobs:
  deploy:
    concurrency: ci-${{ github.ref }}
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout 🛎️
        uses: actions/checkout@v2
        with:
          submodules: true

      - name: Run Ghost 👻
        run: docker run -d -p 2368:2368 -e NODE_ENV=development -e database__connection__filename='/var/lib/ghost/content/data/ghost.db' --name "ghost" -v ${{ github.workspace }}/content:/var/lib/ghost/content ghost:latest

      # - name: Debug
      #   run: |
      #     echo "Debug..."
      #     sleep 10
      #     docker container ls -a
      #     ID=$(docker inspect --format="{{.Id}}" ghost)
      #     echo "Logs ($ID)..."
      #     docker logs "$ID"

      - name: Sleep for 10 seconds 💤
        uses: jakejarvis/wait-action@master
        with:
          time: "10s"

      - name: Install ghost-static-site-generator ✨
        run: npm install -g ghost-static-site-generator

      - name: Generate Static Site 🛠️
        run: gssg --url https://your-domain.com

      - name: Deploy to Github Pages 🚀
        uses: JamesIves/github-pages-deploy-action@v4.4.1
        with:
          branch: main #gh-pages
          folder: static
          token: ${{ secrets.DEPLOY_PAT }}
          repository-name: your-github-username/your-github-username.github.io

Instructions -

1. create two repositories:
   1. yoursite - this is the private repository you'll store your site in, containing ghost, themes, etc.
   2. your-site.github.io - this is the repo we'll publish from ghost to
2. goto https://github.com/your-username/your-site.github.io/settings/pages and enable github pages
3. create a personal access token in GitHub and add it as a secret called DEPLOY_PAT to the your-site repo (https://github.com/your-github-username/your-site/settings/secrets/actions)
4. add a file called CNAME to the root of your-site.github.io, containing your domain name to enable github pages to server content for your domain (see here for help)
5. update your DNS (this is my terraform to use route 53, but you can set this any way you prefer) -

resource "aws_route53_record" "A" {
  name    = "your-site.com"
  records = ["185.199.108.153", "185.199.109.153", "185.199.110.153", "185.199.111.153"]
  ttl     = "300"
  type    = "A"
  zone_id = aws_route53_zone.zone.zone_id
}

resource "aws_route53_record" "www" {
  name    = "www.your-site.com"
  records = ["your-site.github.io"]
  ttl     = "300"
  type    = "CNAME"
  zone_id = aws_route53_zone.zone.zone_id
}

6. add this workflow to .github/workflows in the yoursite repo
7. using docker, pull dockerhub.com/ghost/ghost:latest, and mount /content within the yoursite repo to /var/lib/ghost/content
8. make your updates locally, and when you're done, git push the yoursite repo. The github action will publish your changes to your-site.github.io, and after a few minutes, you'll be able to see the changes