Deploy a Static Site to Cloudflare Pages with GitHub Auto-Deploy

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How to set up a zero-config deployment pipeline: push to GitHub, site updates automatically on Cloudflare Pages with a custom domain.

What You Need

  • A GitHub account
  • A Cloudflare account (free plan works)
  • A domain managed by Cloudflare DNS
  • A static site (plain HTML/CSS/JS, no build step required)

1. Push Your Site to GitHub

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cd ~/Projects/my-site
git init
git add .
git commit -m "Initial commit"
gh repo create my-site --public --source=. --push

If you don’t have the gh CLI, create the repo on GitHub manually and push:

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git remote add origin git@github.com:YOUR_USERNAME/my-site.git
git branch -M main
git push -u origin main

2. Create a Cloudflare Pages Project

  1. Go to Cloudflare Dashboard
  2. Navigate to Workers & Pages
  3. Click Create > Pages > Connect to Git
  4. Select your GitHub account and the repository
  5. Set the production branch to main

Build Settings

For a plain static site (no framework, no bundler):

Setting Value
Build command (leave blank)
Build output directory /

If your site uses a framework:

Framework Build command Output directory
Hugo hugo public
Hexo hexo generate public
Next.js (static) next build && next export out
Vite npm run build dist

Click Save and Deploy. Cloudflare builds and deploys immediately.

Your site is now live at my-site.pages.dev.

3. Add a Custom Domain

  1. In your Pages project, go to Custom domains
  2. Click Set up a custom domain
  3. Enter your subdomain (e.g., app.example.com)
  4. Cloudflare automatically creates the DNS record:
Type Name Content
CNAME app my-site.pages.dev

SSL is provisioned automatically. The domain is usually active within seconds since DNS is already on Cloudflare.

4. Daily Workflow

That’s it. From now on, every push to main triggers an automatic deploy:

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# Edit your files
vim index.html

# Push
git add -A
git commit -m "update feature"
git push

# Site updates in ~30 seconds at your custom domain

No deploy commands. No CI config files. No build scripts.

Alternative: Manual Deploy with Wrangler

If you prefer not to connect GitHub (or need to deploy from a different source), you can use the Wrangler CLI:

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# Install wrangler (one-time)
npm install -g wrangler

# Create the project (one-time)
npx wrangler pages project create my-site --production-branch main

# Deploy (every time)
npx wrangler pages deploy . --project-name my-site

This uploads the current directory directly. No Git integration — you run the command manually each time.

Note: Projects created via wrangler cannot be connected to GitHub after the fact. If you want auto-deploy, delete the project in the dashboard and recreate it through the UI with Git connected.

.gitignore

For a static site deployed to Cloudflare Pages:

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.DS_Store
Thumbs.db
*.swp
*.swo
*~
.wrangler/
node_modules/

.wrangler/ contains local deploy cache from the Wrangler CLI. node_modules/ in case you install wrangler locally.

Summary

Step Action Frequency
Create GitHub repo gh repo create Once
Connect to Cloudflare Pages Dashboard UI Once
Add custom domain Dashboard > Custom domains Once
Deploy git push Every change

Total setup time: ~5 minutes. Zero ongoing maintenance.