# Build and Deploy

This section covers everything you need to know about building your MarkStack site for development and production, deploying to hosting platforms, and setting up automated deployments.

# Build Overview

MarkStack generates a static site from your markdown content. The build process:

1. Reads all markdown files from content/
2. Parses frontmatter and converts markdown to HTML
3. Generates navigation (sidebar and breadcrumbs)
4. Applies the HTML template
5. Creates a search index for client-side search
6. Copies static assets
7. Outputs everything to dist/

The result is a folder of static HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and assets that can be served by any web server.

# What This Section Covers

# Commands Reference

The Commands Reference covers all available npm scripts:

• Building for production
• Running a development server with file watching
• Cleaning the build output
• Previewing the built site locally

# Deployment Guide

The Deployment Guide explains how to deploy your site:

• Preparing your site for production
• Deploying to popular platforms (Netlify, Vercel, GitHub Pages, Cloudflare Pages)
• Self-hosting with nginx or Apache
• Custom domain configuration

# CI/CD Integration

The CI/CD Integration guide covers automated deployments:

• GitHub Actions workflow setup
• GitLab CI configuration
• Automated builds on push
• Preview deployments for pull requests

# Quick Reference

# Development Workflow

# Make changes to content
# Build and watch for changes
npm run watch

# In another terminal, serve the site
npx serve dist

# Preview at http://localhost:3000

# Production Build

# Clean previous build
npm run clean

# Build for production
npm run build

# The dist/ folder is ready to deploy

# Deployment Commands

Most platforms deploy automatically when you push to your repository. For manual deployment:

# Netlify CLI
npx netlify-cli deploy --prod --dir=dist

# Vercel CLI
npx vercel --prod

# GitHub Pages (after setting up workflow)
git push origin main

# Build Performance

MarkStack builds are fast. Typical build times:

The build script processes files in a single pass with no external API calls, keeping builds consistently quick.

# Static Output

The dist/ folder contains:

dist/
  index.html              # Homepage
  404.html                # Error page
  search-index.json       # Search data
  css/
    main.css              # Site styles
    hljs-theme.css        # Code highlighting
  js/
    app.js                # Interactive features
  svg/
    logo.svg              # Site logo
  [page-slug]/
    index.html            # Each page in its own folder

Every page is output as [slug]/index.html for clean URLs without file extensions.

# Hosting Requirements

MarkStack sites are purely static and work on any host that serves HTML files. Requirements:

• Ability to serve static files
• Support for clean URLs (rewriting /page/ to /page/index.html)
• HTTPS support (recommended for security)

No server-side processing, databases, or special runtimes are required.

TIP If you are unsure which hosting platform to choose, Netlify and Vercel both offer generous free tiers and automatic deployments from Git repositories.