It might be good enough for sharing your progress and ideas internally with managers, teammates, and other stakeholders. For the next steps in deployment, see [Optimize for production](#optimize).
1. You need to [create a GitHub account](https://github.com/join) if you don't have one, and then [create a repository](https://help.github.com/articles/create-a-repo/) for your project.
ng build --prod --output-path docs --base-href <project_name>
</code-example>
1. When the build is complete, make a copy of `docs/index.html` and name it `docs/404.html`.
1. Commit your changes and push.
1. On the GitHub project page, configure it to [publish from the docs folder](https://help.github.com/articles/configuring-a-publishing-source-for-github-pages/#publishing-your-github-pages-site-from-a-docs-folder-on-your-master-branch).
You can see your deployed page at `https://<user_name>.github.io/<project_name>/`.
Check out [angular-cli-ghpages](https://github.com/angular-buch/angular-cli-ghpages), a full featured package that does all this for you and has extra functionality.
</div>
<hr>
{@a server-configuration}
## Server configuration
This section covers changes you may have make to the server or to files deployed to the server.
{@a fallback}
### Routed apps must fallback to `index.html`
Angular apps are perfect candidates for serving with a simple static HTML server.
You don't need a server-side engine to dynamically compose application pages because
Angular does that on the client-side.
If the app uses the Angular router, you must configure the server
to return the application's host page (`index.html`) when asked for a file that it does not have.
{@a deep-link}
A routed application should support "deep links".
A _deep link_ is a URL that specifies a path to a component inside the app.
For example, `http://www.mysite.com/heroes/42` is a _deep link_ to the hero detail page
that displays the hero with `id: 42`.
There is no issue when the user navigates to that URL from within a running client.
The Angular router interprets the URL and routes to that page and hero.
But clicking a link in an email, entering it in the browser address bar,
or merely refreshing the browser while on the hero detail page —
all of these actions are handled by the browser itself, _outside_ the running application.
The browser makes a direct request to the server for that URL, bypassing the router.
A static server routinely returns `index.html` when it receives a request for `http://www.mysite.com/`.
But it rejects `http://www.mysite.com/heroes/42` and returns a `404 - Not Found` error *unless* it is
configured to return `index.html` instead.
#### Fallback configuration examples
There is no single configuration that works for every server.
The following sections describe configurations for some of the most popular servers.
The list is by no means exhaustive, but should provide you with a good starting point.
The CLI recompiles the application each time you save a file,
and reloads the browser with the newly compiled application.
The app is hosted in local memory and served on `http://localhost:4200/`, using [webpack-dev-server](https://webpack.js.org/guides/development/#webpack-dev-server).
{@a serve-from-disk}
Later in development, you might want a closer approximation of how your app will behave when deployed.
You can output your distribution folder (`dist`) to disk, but you need to install a different web server.
Try installing [lite-server](https://github.com/johnpapa/lite-server); like `webpack-dev-server`, it can automatically reload your browser when you write new files.
To get the live-reload experience, you will need to run two terminals.
The first runs the build in a watch mode and compiles the application to the `dist` folder.
The second runs the web server against the `dist` folder.
The combination of these two processes provides the same behavior as `ng serve`.
1. Start the build in terminal A:
<code-examplelanguage="none"class="code-shell">
ng build --watch
</code-example>
1. Start the web server in terminal B:
<code-examplelanguage="none"class="code-shell">
lite-server --baseDir="dist"
</code-example>
The default browser opens to the appropriate URL.
* [Lite-Server](https://github.com/johnpapa/lite-server): the default dev server installed with the
[Quickstart repo](https://github.com/angular/quickstart) is pre-configured to fallback to `index.html`.
* [Webpack-Dev-Server](https://github.com/webpack/webpack-dev-server): setup the
`historyApiFallback` entry in the dev server options as follows:
the GitHub Pages server, but you can add a 404 page.
Copy `index.html` into `404.html`.
It will still be served as the 404 response, but the browser will process that page and load the app properly.
It's also a good idea to
[serve from `docs/` on master](https://help.github.com/articles/configuring-a-publishing-source-for-github-pages/#publishing-your-github-pages-site-from-a-docs-folder-on-your-master-branch)
and to
[create a `.nojekyll` file](https://www.bennadel.com/blog/3181-including-node-modules-and-vendors-folders-in-your-github-pages-site.htm)
* [Firebase hosting](https://firebase.google.com/docs/hosting/): add a
Both `ng build` and `ng serve` clear the output folder before they build the project, but only the `ng build` command writes the generated build artifacts to the output folder.
When you have deployed your app to another server, however, you might still want to serve the app so that you can continue to see changes that you make in it.
