I think part of the problem is because you were previously used to GitHub Pages with Jekyll, you were trying to use a new (but old) tool (Wordpress) with GitHub

I think part of the problem is because you were previously used to GitHub Pages with Jekyll, you were trying to use a new (but old) tool (Wordpress) with GitHub Pages and it's not a great fit for it. I'm sure it's possible somehow, but it wouldn't be straightforward. Just conceptually I'm not sure how it would even work: GH Pages is for hosting static sites (AFAIK) and WordPress uses a DB and dynamically writes posts. So I'm guessing you're trying to do a setup where you locally run WP, write from the WP interface, saves posts in your local Mysql DB, and then generate a static site (html files output) and pushing those files into a GitHub repo? It's a roundabout way to publish to a web site to say the least. If Jekyll has enough issues where you need to tweak its config in Ruby every time you want to write, you could try a different static site generator (e.g. Hugo for golang, or Miner [1] for Svelte. Disclaimer: I worked on Miner.). I think the product you're looking for is a static site generator + the use of a client-only WYSIWYG markdown editor that connects to your git repo via OAuth and lets you write on a good UI instead of plain text markdown files. The SSG is one of above; unfortunately I don't have a recommendation or know of a client-only WYSIWYG MD editor with git OAuth integration. 1: https://github.com/bigicoin/miner https://github.com/bigicoin/miner