Viewing changes to github pages on a specific branch

Question

I currently have my github pages repository, b.github.io, which is forked from a.github.io. The a repository uses the master branch to publish the content of the website.

Now, I want to contribute to a via my repository, b. Because I have good faith in branch management, I wish to split my work on my fork into different branches: somebranch, another, etc.

Now, if I do changes to either of these branches, they will not reflect into my Github website (b.github.io shows the content of master, which is in sync with a.github.io). I'd need to see these changes to check if my changes work out before calling a Pull request.

How can I view the changes of the seperate branches? I tried things like b.github.io/tree/somebranch, without much success.

Answer 1

Github pages uses Jekyll to render pages.

So, you can :

• install Jekyll locally,
• make your preview on any branch,
• merge in master when you're happy with your changes,
• push to b.github.io
• make your PR to a.github.io

Answer 2

I'd need to see these changes to check if my changes work out before calling a Pull request.

You should now (July 2020, 4 years later) be able to view your changes on your second repo (before doing a PR) from... any branch you want.
This is still in beta, but:

Build and deploy GitHub Pages from any branch (beta)

Repositories that use GitHub Pages can now build and deploy from any branch.

Publishing to the special gh-pages branch will still work the same as it always has, but you can now choose a different branch in your repository as the publishing source.

This functionality also removes the hardcoded dependency on user and organization pages having a master branch.

Sept. 2020: this is out of beta!