Deploying Your Static Site

Most static site generators leave deployment as an exercise for the reader. seite ships with first-class deploy support for three major platforms: one command handles the build, commit, push, and publish cycle. Preview deploys happen automatically when you push from a branch, and custom domains are wired up interactively.

Overview

seite supports three deployment targets out of the box:

• GitHub Pages: git-based deployment with auto-generated GitHub Actions
• Cloudflare Pages: wrangler-based deployment
• Netlify: CLI-based deployment

Which Target Should I Choose?

All three are free for static sites. You can switch targets anytime by changing one line in seite.toml.

Configuration

Set the deploy target in seite.toml:

[deploy]
target = "github-pages"

Auto-Commit and Push

By default, seite deploy automatically commits all changes and pushes to the remote before building and deploying. This makes deploy a true one-step workflow.

Branch-based preview: when you deploy from a branch other than main or master, seite automatically deploys as a preview instead of production. No need to pass --preview manually.

To disable auto-commit for a project, set auto_commit = false in seite.toml:

[deploy]
target = "github-pages"
auto_commit = false

Or skip it for a single deploy with --no-commit:

seite deploy --no-commit

GitHub Pages

The default deployment target. When you run seite init with --deploy-target github-pages, a GitHub Actions workflow is generated at .github/workflows/deploy.yml that builds and deploys on every push to main.

Manual deployment

seite build
seite deploy

This pushes the dist/ directory to the gh-pages branch.

Dry run

Preview what would be deployed:

seite deploy --dry-run

Custom repository

[deploy]
target = "github-pages"
repo = "https://github.com/user/repo.git"

Cloudflare Pages

Setup

1. Install wrangler: npm install -g wrangler (see Cloudflare Pages docs for details)
2. Authenticate: wrangler login
3. Configure:

[deploy]
target = "cloudflare"
project = "my-site"

The project name is auto-detected from wrangler.toml if present.

Deploy

seite build
seite deploy

Dry run

seite deploy --target cloudflare --dry-run

Netlify

Setup

1. Install Netlify CLI: npm install -g netlify-cli (see Netlify docs for details)
2. Authenticate: netlify login
3. Configure:

[deploy]
target = "netlify"

Deploy

seite build
seite deploy

Dry run

seite deploy --target netlify --dry-run

Custom Domains

Set up a custom domain for any deploy target:

seite deploy --domain example.com

This will:

1. Print DNS records to add at your registrar
2. Update base_url and deploy.domain in seite.toml
3. For Cloudflare: offer to attach the domain to your Pages project via the API
4. For Netlify: offer to add the domain via netlify domains:add
5. For GitHub Pages: auto-generate a CNAME file on the next deploy

You can also set the domain directly in seite.toml:

[deploy]
target = "cloudflare"
project = "my-site"
domain = "example.com"

When deploy.domain is set, pre-flight checks will verify the domain is attached to your project. If not, the interactive recovery will offer to attach it automatically.

Subdomain Deploys

Collections with subdomain set are deployed as separate sites. Each subdomain collection gets its own output directory (dist-subdomains/{name}/) and is deployed independently after the main site.

[[collections]]
name = "docs"
subdomain = "docs"           # → docs.example.com
subdomain_base_url = "https://docs.example.com"  # optional: explicit URL override
deploy_project = "my-docs"   # Cloudflare/Netlify project for this subdomain

subdomain_base_url overrides the auto-derived subdomain URL. This is useful when base_url contains www (e.g., https://www.example.com would otherwise produce docs.www.example.com).

deploy_project specifies which Cloudflare Pages or Netlify project to deploy the subdomain to. If omitted, the global deploy.project is used as a fallback.

seite deploy --dry-run shows the full subdomain deploy plan. In a workspace, cross-site domain conflicts are detected and warned about at deploy time.

Override Target

Override the configured target on the command line:

seite deploy --target netlify     # Deploy to Netlify regardless of seite.toml
seite deploy --target cloudflare  # Deploy to Cloudflare

Build Output

After seite build, the dist/ directory contains everything needed:

dist/
├── index.html           # Homepage
├── index.md             # Homepage markdown
├── feed.xml             # RSS feed
├── sitemap.xml          # XML sitemap
├── robots.txt           # Robots directives
├── llms.txt             # LLM summary
├── llms-full.txt        # Full LLM content
├── search-index.json    # Client-side search data
├── 404.html             # Error page
├── posts/
│   ├── hello-world.html
│   └── hello-world.md
├── docs/
│   ├── getting-started.html
│   └── getting-started.md
└── static/
    └── ...

All three platforms serve 404.html automatically for missing routes.

Next Steps

• Configuration, all deploy-related settings in seite.toml
• CLI Reference: complete list of seite deploy flags and options
• Collections: configure subdomain deploys and collection routing
• Getting Started: set up a new seite site from scratch