What you’ll do
- Change some text on this page
git commitgit push- Watch the pipeline run
- Refresh the server page
Welcome, new teammate
This is a deliberately simple website used to demonstrate the deployment principle: make a local change, commit it, push to the repository, and GitLab CI delivers the update to the server.
What you’ll see
- A build job creates a Docker image
- The image is pushed to the GitLab registry
- A deploy job pulls the image on the server
- The running container restarts with the new version
Safe playground
There’s no backend, no database, and no secrets in the code. It’s just static HTML served by nginx in Docker.
Tip: change a sentence, push it, and point at the pipeline logs while explaining “this is how changes travel.”
Why this exists
In real projects, deployments often feel “magical” because many steps are automated. This page is intentionally boring so you can focus on the flow.
When you push a commit, GitLab runs a pipeline defined in .gitlab-ci.yml.
That pipeline builds a Docker image and (in this demo) deploys it to a server.
How the deploy works (high level)
1) Build
GitLab runner builds an nginx image with this page inside.
2) Push
The image is pushed to GitLab’s container registry.
3) Deploy
The server pulls the new image and restarts the container so nginx serves the new
content.