Deploying a Hexo Blog with Git and Nginx

My previous dynamic blog ran on a free AWS server. I did not renew it and eventually lost the data. Since my needs were modest, rebuilding the site as a static blog was the simpler choice.

Install and run Hexo locally

See the Hexo documentation for the current setup instructions.

npm install hexo-cli -g
hexo new page categories
hexo new page tags
hexo s

Install hexo-deployer-git, then configure _config.yml:

deploy:
  type: git
  repo: root@121.196.197.46:blog.git

Deploy the generated site:

hexo d

Prepare the server

Install Git and Nginx:

apt-get install git-core nginx

Create a bare remote repository:

mkdir ~/blog.git
cd ~/blog.git
git init --bare

Create blog.git/hooks/post-receive. The hook runs whenever the repository receives a push:

#!/bin/bash
rm -rf /var/www/blog
git clone /root/blog.git /var/www/blog

Configure Nginx

The first server block redirects HTTP traffic to HTTPS. The second serves the generated static files and enables TLS and gzip compression.

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name blog.artifact4u.com;
    rewrite ^(.*)$ https://blog.artifact4u.com permanent;
}

server {
    listen 443;
    server_name blog.artifact4u.com;

    ssl on;
    ssl_certificate cert/blog.artifact4u.com.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key cert/blog.artifact4u.com.key;
    ssl_session_timeout 5m;
    ssl_ciphers ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE:ECDH:AES:HIGH:!NULL:!aNULL:!MD5:!ADH:!RC4;
    ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
    ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;

    root /var/www/blog;
    access_log /var/log/access_log;
    error_log /var/log/error_log;

    client_max_body_size 1m;
    gzip on;
    gzip_min_length 1024;
    gzip_buffers 4 8k;
    gzip_types text/css application/x-javascript application/json;
    sendfile on;
}

This configuration reflects the original 2019 deployment. Review current TLS and Nginx recommendations before reusing it in production.