Shipping a Next.js Site to GitHub Pages

Next.js can emit a fully static site — no Node server required — which is perfect for free static hosts. Three settings do the heavy lifting:

// next.config.ts
const nextConfig = {
  output: "export",          // emit static HTML to ./out
  images: { unoptimized: true }, // no image-optimization server
  trailingSlash: true,       // /blog/ -> /blog/index.html
};

Run next build and you get an out/ directory you can drop onto GitHub Pages, Cloudflare Pages, or any static host.

The gotchas

• No server features. API routes, SSR, and ISR don't exist in an export.
• Dynamic routes need generateStaticParams so every page is known at build.
• Add a .nojekyll file so GitHub Pages doesn't mangle _next/ paths.

That's the whole trick — this very site is built exactly this way.