deploy-to-neocities

Efficiently deploy a website to Neocities using Github actions. Uses content aware diffing to only update files that changed.

Alternatively, you can use the bin helper in async-neocities to deploy to neocities locally from your own machine as well as in CI.

Usage

name: Deploy to neocities

# only run on changes to main. Use main or master depending on whatever your default branch is called.
on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main

concurrency: # prevent concurrent deploys doing strange things
  group: deploy-to-neocities
  cancel-in-progress: true

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v4
    # Set up any tools and build steps here
    # This example uses a Node.js toolchain to build a site
    - name: Use Node.js
      uses: actions/setup-node@v4
      with:
        node-version: lts/*
    # If you have a different build process, replace this with your own build steps
    - name: Install deps and build
      run: |
        npm i
        npm run build
    # When the dist_dir is ready, deploy it to neocities
    - name: Deploy to neocities
      uses: bcomnes/deploy-to-neocities@v3
      with:
        api_key: $
        cleanup: false
        neocities_supporter: false # set this to true if you have a supporter account and want to bypass unsuported files filter.
        preview_before_deploy: true # print a deployment plan prior to waiting for files to upload.
        dist_dir: public

💻 Example YML
🌎 Example Deploy

Create a workflow .yml file in your repository’s .github/workflows directory. An example workflow is available above. For more information, reference the GitHub Help Documentation for Creating a workflow file.

You’ll need the API token for your site. Go to:

https://neocities.org/settings/#api_key

Get your site’s API token. In your GitHub repository, set a secret called NEOCITIES_API_TOKEN. Set the api_token input on your deploy-to-neocities action to $ as in the example above.

During your workflow, generate the files you want to deploy to Neocities into a directory. Set this as the dist_dir directory in your workflow (the default is public). You can use any tools to generate your site that can be installed or brought into the Github actions environment.

Once the build is complete, deploy-to-neocities will efficiently upload all new and all changed files to Neocities. Any files on Neocities that don’t exist in the dist_dir are considered ‘orphaned’ files. To destructively remove these ‘orphaned’ files, set the cleanup input to true.

You most likely only want to run this on the master branch so that only changes committed to master result in website updates. Running a test build that does not deploy on all branches and PRs can help catch changes that will break the build.

Inputs

api_key (REQUIRED): The API token for your Neocities website to deploy to.
dist_dir: The directory to deploy to Neocities. Default: public. Don’t deploy your root repo directory (e.g. ./). It contains .git, .github and other files that won’t deploy properly to neocities. Keep it clean by keeping or building your site into a subdir and deploy that.
neocities_supporter: Set this to true if you have a paid neocities account and want to bypass the unsupported files filter.
cleanup: Boolean string (true or false). If true, deploy-to-neocities will destructively delete files found on Neocities not found in your dist_dir. Default: false.
preview_before_deploy: Boolean string (true or false). If true, deploy-to-neocities will print a preview of the files that will be uploaded and deleted. Default: true.
protected_files: An optional glob string used to mark files as protected. Protected files are never cleaned up. Test this option out with cleanup set to false before relying on it. Protected files are printed when cleanup is set to true or false. Glob strings are processed by minimatch against remote neocities file paths. Protected files can still be updated.

Outputs

None.

FAQ

Why should I deploy to Neocities?

Neocities offers a bunch of nice properties:

Neocities CDN uses a pure anycast network providing efficient content serving no matter where your visitors are located around the world.
Anycast doesn’t require special DNS records to achieve geolocation routing characteristics. Simple A and AAAA records are all you need. Bare names and all!
Neocities owns its own ARIN IP block and has its own BGP peering agreements, eliminating entire layers of bureaucracy between your content and the rest of the Internet typical of all major cloud providers.
Far faster cold cache access than other popular static hosting services. Perfect for personal websites, projects and other infrequently accessed documents.
Simple and understandable feature set. You can hand upload and edit files along side built/deployed assets.
First class IPv6 support.
Fun, friendly, creative and organic community with an interesting social network.
Independent, sustainable and altruistic service run by @kyledrake and word on the street is that the service is profitable.
Affordable and predictable pricing. There is a generous free tier and you can get custom domains and additional sites for $5/mo.
Offers simple, Google-free site analytics.
Makes accepting tips a breeze.
Bring your own CI environment, or don’t.
Free https via Lets Encrypt.
Cute cat logo.
Support the distributed web. Built in IPFS support.
Beginner friendly docs for learning how to make your own websites.

What are some of the drawbacks compared to Netlify/Vercel?

Not appropriate for hyper traffic commercial sites most likely.
No concept of a Deploy or atomicity when changing files.
Most features of these services are not included. Neocities is just static file hosting and a few basic features around that.
Doesn’t offer support.
No deploy previews.
No Github Deploys API support (yet).

Sites using deploy-to-neocities

CHANGELOG

See changelog.md