---
title: "Automating Hugo Deployment with Gitea Actions"
date: 2025-02-27
author: "Dev"
tags: ["gitea", "ci/cd", "hugo"]
---

Recently, I tried setting up **Gitea Actions** to automatically update my Hugo blog whenever I pushed new content. The idea was simple:  
- Use Gitea’s built-in CI/CD to pull the repo,  
- Build the site using Hugo,  
- Deploy it to the server.

## Setting Up Gitea Actions
First, I created a `.gitea/workflows/deploy.yml` file with the following steps:

```yaml
name: Deploy Hugo Site

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Clone repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v3

      - name: Install Hugo
        run: |
          sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y hugo

      - name: Build site
        run: hugo -D

      - name: Deploy to server
        run: |
          scp -r public/* user@server:/var/www/html/

```

# Authentication Issues 😩
To deploy, I needed SSH access to the server. Gitea doesn’t have built-in secrets management (like GitHub Actions), so I had to hardcode my SSH private key inside the workflow.

![My SSH Key](/images/mykey.png)

I knew this wasn't ideal, but I just wanted to get it working first. Unfortunately, after multiple attempts, it still failed with permission denied (publickey) errors.

# What's Next? 🤔
Instead of fighting with Gitea Actions, I decided to try something else. In my next post, I'll explain how I switched to a simpler, more reliable approach using a sync service.