Custom Domain for Github Pages Hosted Blog

Using Github Pages as CI/CD, and using my custom subdomain

Lets get to it 2024! Already beat my 2023 posting record!

A quick google yeilded a github doc linked here seems to show me how to use my custom domain to point to the Github Pages blog.

If all works well, you should be reading this from my domain www.xavierjortiz.com instead of xavier-j-ortiz.github.io.

Pretty simple?

• Add my custom domain www.xavierjortiz.com to Settings --> Pages --> Custom Domain
• Update my domain registar to have www.xavierjortiz.com use a CNAME that resolves to xavier-j-ortiz.github.io.

Could it be that simple?

I update www.xavierjortiz.com to point to the github URL, verified that it’s resolving to the github URL, and then added it to the repositories Github Pages settings. However, I receive a red box mentioning that both www.xavierjortiz.com and its alternative name are improperly configured.

I’ll give it some time, and in the meantime dig into the documentation some more in case I missed something.

After reading and making sure that I hadn’t missed anything, I caught that the Enforce HTTPS option was able to be toggled. So I went and checked that as it’s important to enforce HTTPS for security purposes.

Patience is Virtue

After about 10 minutes, I was able to see the new articles posted, however, had to open the website via Firefox for first confirmation, given that there seems to be some persistent DNS (or other) cache on Chrome. Something screwy.

After confirming on Firefox, I closed my chrome session, and on reopening and disabling cache on the developer’s tools I was able to see my previous post my most recent post, that was not hosted on the GCP webserver.

LetsEncrypt Certificate

After enabling HTTPS in settings, I was relieved that the certificate was generated for my domain via github pages, and was generated today of course. Very nice integration that I don’t have to worry about.

Overlooked Verifying the Apex Domain

After singing my praises and publishing this article, I noticed that after about 10 minutes, I was not able to access the website anymore from my www.xavierjortiz.com subdomain.

After digging a bit more, realized that I hadn’t verified that I actually own the apex domain www.xavierjortiz.com.

This totally makes sense, and after digging a bit, stumbled upon this github article on how to verify the apex domain.

The gist of it is to go to your github account’s Settings --> Pages --> Verified domains, and add your apex domain. After doing this, you’re then instructed to add a github specified subdomain to your domain, and have it resolve a TXT record with a specific code value.

This is a way to verify that you are in control of the apex domain that you’re going to be serving any subsequent github pages from github from via a subdomain.

Overlooked CNAME file

One thing that I also overlooked was the CNAME file.

As happens when looking into guides for the first time, I did see a reference to a CNAME file, however it seemed to me that I didn’t need to add a file in the repo. I was mistaken, as I had misunderstood the language.

The CNAME was added to the repo automagically by github. But since I was not doing a git pull on my repository, every time I updated my repository with a post, and then git push origin main --force into github, I would force my local main branch which did not have the CNAME file, and would misconfigure Github Page’s configuration that would allow me to use my subdomain www.xavierjortiz.com.

Once I noticed this, I ran a git pull, updating my repo, and am now updating this post. I now hope that www.xavierjortiz.com will not have any issues forwarding Github Pages webpage.

Great success!

First small victory of the year. I am now confident that you’re reading this from my website!

Additionally, one less thing that I’ll need to host on my webserver! Huzzah!