Got this to work after a day of debugging - here's some advice to beginners using this github action

[codekiln]

I recently set up a project that used this plugin: https://github.com/codekiln/gitpa. Many thanks to James Ives for developing it. In the process of setting it up I encountered some pain points, which I resolved. Hopefully these help you - and please, correct me if I'm wrong about any of this.

• Ensure that your workflow permissions are set to Read and Write. Go to Settings > Actions > General and enable "Read and write permissions" for the workflow. Without this, the action cannot push to gh-pages.
• Verify that you’ve correctly set your GitHub Pages source. Even if you’re using a GitHub Action, you must choose the “Deploy from a branch” option in Settings > Pages and select the gh-pages branch that the action deploys to. The github-pages-deploy-action updates that branch, and GitHub Pages uses that branch to serve your site.
• Don’t assume that selecting “GitHub Actions” as the source means the action will handle everything automatically. The github-pages-deploy-action only updates the gh-pages branch; a separate GitHub action relies on that configured branch to actually conduct the deploy in a subsequent step.
• If you see “There is nothing to commit. Exiting early…” it may mean this action didn’t detect changes. Double-check that the build step is actually producing updated files in the folder you’re deploying.
• Be patient and refresh your browser or use a private window to check results. Sometimes it takes a bit for the updated site to appear.
• Compare your setup to a known working example. For instance, if you’re following the Logseq docs example, remember that their project settings may differ from yours. Confirm all configuration steps in both the action’s README and your repository settings.