vuejs history mode with github/gitlab pages - SEO

You could use a 404.html hack https://github.com/rafrex/spa-github-pages/blob/gh-pages/404.html

Or you can try to pre rendering your vue into static html
https://nuxtjs.org/guide#static-generated-pre-rendering-

I found a solution that works for me in this article.

To summarize the solution, I created the following 404.html file and added it to the project’s root folder.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
        <script>
            // ====================================================================================================================
            // This text is simply to make sure the 404.html file is bigger than 512 bytes, else, internet explorer will ignore it.
            // Thank you internet explorer for requiring such awesome workarounds in order to work properly
            // ====================================================================================================================
            sessionStorage.redirect = location.href;
        </script>
        <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;URL='/'">
    </head>
</html>

I then added this javascript in the index.html:

(function(){
    var redirect = sessionStorage.redirect;
    delete sessionStorage.redirect;
    if (redirect && redirect != location.href) {
        history.replaceState(null, null, redirect);
    }
})();

Run into same issue, found this question & tried both solution above but no luck. Then tried combine them like this:

Here my 404.html file

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>My App</title>
    <script>
        // ========================================
        // Credits:
        // - https://stackoverflow.com/a/50259501
        // - https://stackoverflow.com/a/50247140
        // ========================================
        const segment = 1

        sessionStorage.redirect = '/' + location.pathname.slice(1).split('/').slice(segment).join('/')

        location.replace(
            location.pathname.split('/').slice(0, 1 + segment).join('/')
        )
    </script>
</head>
</html>

And here’s my main.js file

const app = new Vue({
    router,
    store,
    render: h => h(App),
    created () {
        if (sessionStorage.redirect) {
            const redirect = sessionStorage.redirect
            delete sessionStorage.redirect
            this.$router.push(redirect)
        }
    }
})

app.$mount('#app')

And it works

A little late to the party but I have a method to do this. I am using Vue CLI 3 and GitHub pages.

First of all, I commit all the source file into a source branch, and commit the dist folder (generated by Vue) to the master branch using the following shell command:

# deploy.sh

#!/usr/bin/env sh

# abort on errors
set -e


# build
echo Building. this may take a minute...
npm run build

# navigate into the build output directory
cd dist
# create a copy of index.html
cp index.html 404.html
find . -name ".DS_Store" -delete

# if you are deploying to a custom domain
echo 'custom.com' > CNAME

# remove git and reinitialise
rm -rf .git
echo Deploying..
git init
git add -A
git commit -m 'deploy'

# deploy
git remote add origin https://github.com/User/repo.github.io
git push origin master --force

cd -
rm -rf dist

When GitHub pages can’t find the route, it uses 404.html. The deploy program I wrote makes a copy of index.html and names it 404.html. That’s why it works.

Edit
Just realised that this wouldn’t be good for SEO purposes as it returns a 404 response and Google won’t index it.

Based on Fery’s solution, I think instead of handling redirect when creating Vue instance, the Navigation Guards could work better.

I basically added a beforeEnter guard for the index route, so that the index page will be skipped and directly go to the target page.

const routes = [
{
  path: '/',
  component: Index,
  beforeEnter: (to, from, next) => {
    if (sessionStorage.getItem('redirect') !== null) {
      const redirect = sessionStorage.redirect
      delete sessionStorage.redirect
      next(redirect)
    } else {
      next()
    }
  }
},
]

Hope this is helpful.

Not sure about GitLab Pages, but in GitHub Pages you can serve your whole Vue.js Application through the 404.html file instead of the index.html file. Simply rename the index.html file to 404.html file on deploy.

EDIT:
As pointed out in the comments, this has the side effect of having GitHub/GitLab serve your website with a 404 status code.

GitLab Answer

For those using GitLab there is now support to redirect to index.html using a _redirects file in your public folder.

Steps:

Create a file named _redirects in the public folder
Add this snippet line to that file

    /* /index.html 200

Documentation: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/pages/redirects.html#rewrite-all-requests-to-a-root-indexhtml

2021 Solution for vue3 & vue-cli:

Follow this with "Basic instructions":

https://github.com/rafgraph/spa-github-pages#usage-instructions

no need to change var pathSegmentsToKeep = 0; the 404.html.

and then in the vue.config.js:

  // do not use "./dist/"
  publicPath: "/dist/",
  // make the index.html file place at the root of the repo
  indexPath: "../index.html",

then the spa is good to go~

vuejs history mode with github/gitlab pages – SEO

Answers