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Other Hosts

A Clay build is a folder of static files, publish/public. Any service or server that serves static files can host it. Three settings matter everywhere:

Setting	Value
Build command	`npx clay build --strict`
Output folder	`publish/public`
Base URL	`/` at the root of a domain; otherwise `baseURL` in `clay.yaml`, or `CLAY_BASE_URL` in the build settings

#Hosting services

In Site configuration → Build & deploy, or in a netlify.toml:

netlify.toml

[build]
  command = "npx clay build --strict"
  publish = "publish/public"

[build.environment]
  NODE_VERSION = "22"

Netlify serves 404.html for unknown addresses on its own.

Create a project from your repository and set:

Setting	Value
Framework preset	None
Build command	`npx clay build --strict`
Build output directory	`publish/public`
Environment variable	`NODE_VERSION` = `22`

GitLab publishes the folder public of a job named pages. Move the build there in .gitlab-ci.yml:

.gitlab-ci.yml

pages:
  image: node:22
  variables:
    GIT_DEPTH: 0   # full history for last-updated dates
  script:
    - npm ci
    - npx clay build --strict
    - mv publish/public public
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - public
  rules:
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == $CI_DEFAULT_BRANCH

Project sites on GitLab live under the project’s name, like on GitHub: set baseURL: "/my-project/".

A coding agent can set it up; name your host in place of Netlify:

Suggested prompt

Read https://clay-doc.github.io/clay-example-repo/publishing/other-hosts.md.
Then deploy the Clay docs in this repository to Netlify: add the host's
configuration, set baseURL in clay.yaml if the site is not at the root of its
domain, and check with `npx clay build --strict`.

#Your own web server

Copy publish/public to the server and serve it as static files. Each page is a folder with an index.html, so the server should:

serve index.html for folder addresses (/guides/setup/ → /guides/setup/index.html),
answer unknown addresses with 404.html and status 404.

With the site at the root of the domain:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name docs.example.com;
    root /var/www/docs;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }

    error_page 404 /404.html;
}

Dockerfile

FROM nginx:alpine
COPY publish/public /usr/share/nginx/html

Caddyfile

docs.example.com {
    root * /var/www/docs
    file_server
    handle_errors {
        rewrite * /404.html
        file_server
    }
}

Tip

npx clay preview behaves like these hosts. If a page works there, it works on the server.