Add step about merging gh-pages branch to main branch (Article: Creating a GitHub Pages site with Jekyll)

[dcorks]

Code of Conduct

• I have read and agree to the GitHub Docs project's Code of Conduct

What article on docs.github.com is affected?

https://docs.github.com/en/pages/setting-up-a-github-pages-site-with-jekyll/creating-a-github-pages-site-with-jekyll

What part(s) of the article would you like to see updated?

This article doesn't mention the process of merging the side branch used to add the Jekyll files (called `gh-pages' in the article) with the main branch. Merging to the main branch is necessary in order to make the Jekyll version of the page visible.

Further, if a user then used an existing repository for the process described on the page, then attempting to merge the branches fails because the two branches have "entirely different commit histories". (As far as I can tell, there is no page in the GitHub docs that describes this error message.)

For someone generally unfamiliar with GitHub, the missing information is enough to stop them from completing the task of publishing the Jekyll-powered version of their pages.

I propose that this information be added. I would do it myself but I am stuck halfway through the process myself because of the problems described above. If someone can explain it to me, I'll create the pull request.

Additional information

No response

[felicitymay]

Hi @dcorks - many thanks for opening this issue to highlight the problems that you found when following the instructions in this article 👋🏻

It looks as if you chose to publish your site from a gh-pages branch in step 6 of Creating your site.

You don't need to merge your changes into main to publish them, but you do need to update the settings for your repository to publish from the gh-pages branch. See Publishing from a branch.

If I've misunderstood the problem you encountered, feel free to reopen this issue.