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docker deployment nginx self-hosting production

Docker Deployment — Development & Production

Run jekyll-infops-theme with Docker — zero Ruby required. Dev mode with live reload, production mode with nginx, gzip and security headers.

Table of Contents

jekyll-infops-theme ships with a complete Docker setup for both development and production. No Ruby installation required on your machine.

Files overview

File Purpose
Dockerfile Multi-stage: dev target (Jekyll + livereload) and prod target (nginx)
docker-compose.yml Development mode — mounts sources as a live volume
docker-compose.prod.yml Production mode — builds static site, serves with nginx
docker/nginx.conf nginx config with gzip, caching and security headers

Development mode

docker compose up
  • Starts Jekyll with --livereload
  • Mounts the entire project as a volume — file changes trigger instant rebuilds
  • Opens at http://localhost:4000
# First launch or after Gemfile changes — rebuild the image
docker compose up --build

# Run in background
docker compose up -d

# Tail logs
docker compose logs -f jekyll
Gem cache

The dev Compose file mounts a named volume for the bundler gem cache. After the first build, gems are cached across container restarts — startup goes from ~60s to ~3s.

Analytics in development

JEKYLL_ENV is not set in dev mode, so jekyll.environment evaluates to development. Analytics scripts in _includes/analytics.html are guarded by a production environment check and are never injected during local development.

Production mode

docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml up -d --build
# → http://localhost (port 80)

The production build:

  1. Runs bundle exec jekyll build with JEKYLL_ENV=production — activates analytics
  2. Copies _site/ into an nginx Alpine image (~20MB final image)
  3. Serves the static site with gzip, long-term asset caching, and a set of security headers

nginx security headers

The docker/nginx.conf sets:

add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN";
add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff";
add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block";
add_header Referrer-Policy "strict-origin-when-cross-origin";
add_header Permissions-Policy "geolocation=(), microphone=(), camera=()";

Edit docker/nginx.conf to add a Content-Security-Policy if needed for your analytics/comments providers.

Caching strategy

# HTML — no cache (always fresh)
location ~* \.html$ { add_header Cache-Control "no-store"; }

# Assets — 1 year (Jekyll fingerprints filenames)
location ~* \.(css|js|woff2?|jpg|png|svg|ico)$ {
  add_header Cache-Control "public, max-age=31536000, immutable";
}

Useful commands

# Check running containers
docker compose ps

# Stop cleanly
docker compose down

# Destroy containers AND gem cache volume (full reset)
docker compose down -v

# Rebuild without layer cache
docker compose build --no-cache

# Production: view nginx access logs
docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml logs -f nginx

Running behind a reverse proxy

If you place nginx behind Traefik, Caddy or another reverse proxy, edit docker-compose.prod.yml to remove the host port binding and let the proxy handle TLS:

services:
  nginx:
    # remove: ports: ["80:80"]
    expose: ["80"]
    labels:
      - "traefik.enable=true"
      - "traefik.http.routers.blog.rule=Host(`blog.yourdomain.com`)"
      - "traefik.http.routers.blog.entrypoints=websecure"
      - "traefik.http.routers.blog.tls.certresolver=letsencrypt"
update url in _config.yml

Set url: 'https://blog.yourdomain.com' in _config.yml so absolute URLs in feeds, sitemaps and SEO tags resolve correctly.

GitHub Pages (no Docker)

For public hosting, GitHub Actions is simpler than Docker:

  1. Push the repo to GitHub
  2. Settings → Pages → Source → GitHub Actions
  3. The .github/workflows/pages.yml workflow builds with JEKYLL_ENV=production and deploys on every push to main
  4. Site is live at https://your-username.github.io/repo-name/
Custom domain on GitHub Pages

Create a CNAME file at the repo root containing your domain (e.g. blog.yourdomain.com). Then add a CNAME DNS record pointing to your-username.github.io. GitHub issues the TLS certificate automatically via Let’s Encrypt.

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