Prerequisites

Before setting up the workflow, I configured:

• A Next.js application using static export
• An Amazon S3 bucket for hosting static assets
• A CloudFront distribution in front of the bucket
• An IAM user with deployment permissions
• GitHub repository secrets

Required GitHub Secrets

The GitHub Actions Workflow

name: Deploy Website

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: 22

      - run: npm ci

      - run: npm run build

      - uses: aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials@v4
        with:
          aws-access-key-id: ${{ secrets.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID }}
          aws-secret-access-key: ${{ secrets.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY }}
          aws-region: ${{ secrets.AWS_REGION }}

      - run: |
          aws s3 sync out/ s3://${{ secrets.S3_BUCKET_NAME }} --delete

      - run: |
          aws cloudfront create-invalidation \
            --distribution-id ${{ secrets.CLOUDFRONT_DISTRIBUTION_ID }} \
            --paths "/*"

Conclusion

With GitHub Actions handling the build, Amazon S3 hosting the static assets, and CloudFront serving content globally, every push to the main branch automatically deploys the latest version of the website. This setup provides a simple, reliable, and repeatable deployment pipeline for static Next.js applications.