In the previous article, we learned about running Jekyll through Azure App Services, the required deployment settings, and forcing continous deployment by installing Ruby from batch files created in Kudu. In part two of this series, we’ll be focusing on
creating an Azure Web App and deploying the blog site using the automatic scripts running on Kudu.
Create your Azure Web app
When the Web app is created, go to your Web App and under Settings, add a new environment variable SCMCOMMANDIDLE_TIMEOUT=600. This one will help to avoid timeout when installing Jekyll and all dependencies.
Also under Settings, click on Deployment source and select Continuous deployment. You get a list of all supported services: choose GitHub. If you haven’t done it yet, have a look at this post.
Lastly, under Tools, click on Extensions. Install Jekyll extension. Extensions add functionality to your App service.
Deploy
Once the files are committed to your repository, Kudu should deploy your site. During the first deployment, it might take a bit longer since Ruby needs to be downloaded and installed. After that it seems that happens in the blink of an eye.
By the way, it would be great if Ruby and DevKit would be included in Azure Web App.
Conclusion
While it appears to be a lot of steps, day-to-day authoring is actually quite simple – I just check-in Markdown files to GitHub and my blog is updated shortly on Azure App service.