This GitHub Action creates and deploys a single-page GitHub Pages website from the gh-pages branch. It converts content from a Markdown file to HTML using Pandoc whenever changes are made. It also deploys the website if any other relevant files are modified.

Here's what your repo structure's main branch should look like:

- your-repo/
  ├── .github/
  │   └── workflows/
  │       └── convert-and-deploy.yml     # Workflow to call this action
  ├── assets/
  │   ├── index.md                       # Markdown file to be converted
  │   └── template.html                  # HTML template for conversion
  ├── public/                            # Files to deploy
  │   └── index.html                     # Converted HTML file
  │   └── ...                            # Other public/ files and directories
  └── ...                                # Other project files and directories

1. Go to Settings > Actions > General > Workflow permissions and enable Read and write permissions.

2. Ensure that the required files are in the main branch's root directory:

mkdir -p assets public && touch assets/index.md assets/template.html public/index.html

3. Create the workflow:

mkdir -p .github/workflows && touch .github/workflows/convert-and-deploy.yml

Paste the following into convert-and-deploy.yml:

name: "Convert & Deploy"
on:
  push:
    paths:
      - "assets/index.md"
      - "assets/template.html"
      - "public/**"
  workflow_dispatch:
jobs:
  convert:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: "Run Pandoc Conversion and Pages Deployment action"
        uses: srciaga/pandoc-pages@main
        with:
          gh_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

4. Push all the file's you've added so far.
5. The workflow should run and create the gh-pages branch. If not, go to the Actions tab, click on the Convert & Deploy workflow. Run the workflow from the main branch.
6. Go to Settings > Pages > Build and deployment and configure the following:
   • Source: Deploy from a branch
   • Branch: gh-pages / (root)
7. git pull and push modifications to index.md and template.html. Your website will automatically deploy! Remember to pull after each deployment.

There are sample files for index.md and template.html in this repo.

Check out the Pandoc User's Guide to learn more about templates and Pandoc's extended markdown.