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GitLab Pages default domain names and URLs

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On this document, learn how to name your project for GitLab Pages according to your intended website's URL.

GitLab Pages default domain names

  • Changed unique domain URLs to be shorter in GitLab 17.4.

If you use your own GitLab instance to deploy your site with GitLab Pages, verify your Pages wildcard domain with your sysadmin. This guide is valid for any GitLab instance, provided that you replace the Pages wildcard domain on GitLab.com (*.gitlab.io) with your own.

If you set up a GitLab Pages project on GitLab, it's automatically accessible under a subdomain of namespace.example.io. The namespace is defined by your username on GitLab.com, or the group name you created this project under. For GitLab self-managed instances, replace example.io with your instance's Pages domain. For GitLab.com, Pages domains are *.gitlab.io.

Type of GitLab Pages Example path of a project in GitLab Website URL
User pages username/username.example.io http(s)://username.example.io
Group pages acmecorp/acmecorp.example.io http(s)://acmecorp.example.io
Project pages owned by a user username/my-website http(s)://username.example.io/my-website
Project pages owned by a group acmecorp/webshop http(s)://acmecorp.example.io/webshop
Project pages owned by a subgroup acmecorp/documentation/product-manual http(s)://acmecorp.example.io/documentation/product-manual

When the Use unique domain setting is enabled, Pages builds a unique domain name from the flattened project name and a six-character unique ID. Users receive a 308 Permanent Redirect status redirecting the browser to these unique domain URLs. Browsers might cache this redirect:

Type of GitLab Pages Example path of a project in GitLab Website URL
User pages username/username.example.io http(s)://username-example-io-123456.example.io
Group pages acmecorp/acmecorp.example.io http(s)://acmecorp-example-io-123456.example.io
Project pages owned by a user username/my-website https://my-website-123456.gitlab.io/
Project pages owned by a group acmecorp/webshop http(s)://webshop-123456.example.io/
Project pages owned by a subgroup acmecorp/documentation/product-manual http(s)://product-manual-123456.example.io/

123456 in the example URLs is a six-character unique ID. For example, if the unique ID is f85695, the last example is http(s)://product-manual-f85695.example.io/.

WARNING: There are some known limitations regarding namespaces served under the general domain name and HTTPS. Make sure to read that section.

To understand Pages domains clearly, read the examples below.

NOTE: The following examples imply you disabled the Use unique domain setting. If you did not, refer to the previous table, replacing example.io by gitlab.io.

Project website examples

  • You created a project called blog under your username john, therefore your project URL is https://gitlab.com/john/blog/. After you enabled GitLab Pages for this project, and build your site, you can access it at https://john.gitlab.io/blog/.
  • You created a group for all your websites called websites, and a project in this group is called blog. Your project URL is https://gitlab.com/websites/blog/. After you enabled GitLab Pages for this project, the site is available at https://websites.gitlab.io/blog/.
  • You created a group for your engineering department called engineering, a subgroup for all your documentation websites called docs, and a project in this subgroup is called workflows. Your project URL is https://gitlab.com/engineering/docs/workflows/. After you enabled GitLab Pages for this project, the site is available at https://engineering.gitlab.io/docs/workflows.

User and Group website examples

  • Under your username, john, you created a project called john.gitlab.io. Your project URL is https://gitlab.com/john/john.gitlab.io. After you enabled GitLab Pages for your project, your website is published under https://john.gitlab.io.
  • Under your group websites, you created a project called websites.gitlab.io. Your project's URL is https://gitlab.com/websites/websites.gitlab.io. After you enabled GitLab Pages for your project, your website is published under https://websites.gitlab.io.

General example:

  • On GitLab.com, a project site is always available under https://namespace.gitlab.io/project-slug
  • On GitLab.com, a user or group website is available under https://namespace.gitlab.io/
  • On your GitLab instance, replace gitlab.io above with your Pages server domain. Ask your sysadmin for this information.

URLs and base URLs

NOTE: The baseurl option might be named differently in some static site generators.

Every Static Site Generator (SSG) default configuration expects to find your website under a (sub)domain (example.com), not in a subdirectory of that domain (example.com/subdir). Therefore, whenever you publish a project website (for example, namespace.gitlab.io/project-slug), you must look for this configuration (base URL) on your static site generator's documentation and set it up to reflect this pattern.

For example, for a Jekyll site, the baseurl is defined in the Jekyll configuration file, _config.yml. If your website URL is https://john.gitlab.io/blog/, you need to add this line to _config.yml:

baseurl: "/blog"

On the contrary, if you deploy your website after forking one of our default examples, the baseurl is already configured this way, as all examples there are project websites. If you decide to make yours a user or group website, you must remove this configuration from your project. For the Jekyll example we just mentioned, you must change Jekyll's _config.yml to:

baseurl: ""

If you're using the plain HTML example, you don't need to set a baseurl.

Custom domains

GitLab Pages supports custom domains and subdomains, served under HTTP or HTTPS. See GitLab Pages custom domains and SSL/TLS Certificates for more information.