diff --git a/.github/workflows/deploy.yml b/.github/workflows/deploy.yml
index 3f114fa..622bd6d 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/deploy.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/deploy.yml
@@ -35,6 +35,7 @@ jobs:
           GH_USER: ${{ secrets.GH_USER }}
           # GH_TOKEN=<hex token value>
           #   - pushes gh-pages during build-bin/idl_to_gh_pages
+          #   - create via https://github.com/settings/tokens
           GH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GH_TOKEN }}
           GPG_SIGNING_KEY: ${{ secrets.GPG_SIGNING_KEY }}
           # GPG_PASSPHRASE=<passphrase for GPG_SIGNING_KEY>
@@ -51,5 +52,4 @@ jobs:
           SONATYPE_PASSWORD: ${{ secrets.SONATYPE_PASSWORD }}
         run: |  # GITHUB_REF will be refs/heads/master or refs/tags/N.M.L
           build-bin/configure_deploy &&
-          build-bin/git/login_git &&
           build-bin/deploy $(echo ${GITHUB_REF} | cut -d/ -f 3)
diff --git a/.github/workflows/test.yml b/.github/workflows/test.yml
index 6879678..400986e 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/test.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/test.yml
@@ -17,6 +17,7 @@ on:
 jobs:
   test:
     runs-on: ubuntu-20.04  # newest available distribution, aka focal
+    if: "!contains(github.event.head_commit.message, 'maven-release-plugin')"
     steps:
       - name: Checkout Repository
         uses: actions/checkout@v2
diff --git a/RELEASE.md b/RELEASE.md
index 96b8df8..b3fdd96 100644
--- a/RELEASE.md
+++ b/RELEASE.md
@@ -20,7 +20,6 @@ This repo uses semantic versions. Please keep this in mind when choosing version
    The `N.M.L` tag triggers [`build-bin/deploy`](build-bin/deploy), which does the following:
      * Publishes jars to https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/releases [`build-bin/maven/maven_deploy`](build-bin/maven/maven_deploy)
        * Later, the same jars synchronize to Maven Central
-     * Pushes images to Docker registries [`build-bin/docker_push`](build-bin/docker_push)
 
    Notes:
      * https://search.maven.org/ index will take longer than direct links like https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/io/zipkin
diff --git a/build-bin/configure_deploy b/build-bin/configure_deploy
index 3b6859b..d447466 100755
--- a/build-bin/configure_deploy
+++ b/build-bin/configure_deploy
@@ -8,3 +8,6 @@ set -ue
 
 build-bin/maven/maven_go_offline
 build-bin/gpg/configure_gpg
+
+# openzipkin/zipkin-api publishes gh-pages on commit
+build-bin/git/login_git