How to publish your GitHub pages on a domain

Photo by Igor Miske on Unsplash

Publishing your GitHub pages is a two step process: you first configure GitHub and then set the DNS.

On GitHub

Assuming that you already pushed the website to GitHub, go to “Settings”.If you already didn’t so, rename your repository as <mysite>.github.io: this will publish your repository as <mysite>.github.io.

Now scroll down to find the “GitHub Pages” section. Publish the master branch:

Enabling HTTPS is not mandatory but is strongly suggested.

Specify your custom domain:

Now it’s time to create a special file in the root directory of the site repository, the CNAME file:

This file contains only one text row, specifying the pointing domain:

mysite.com

On DNS management

Before making changes, backup your current DNS configuration.

In your DNS management interface (I will refer to Aruba provider), add the following A records (as stated in this help page on GitHub), without specifying an host name:

185.199.108.153
185.199.109.153
185.199.110.153
185.199.111.153

If the www host is defined in A record, remove it, because you are going to add it as CNAME record.

Now on with CNAME records. Add a www host, pointing to <mysite>.github.io. (replace <mysite> with the real name of your repository name): don’t forget to add the dot (.) at the end of the hostname!

If everything is ok, you should see a green banner in the Setting section of the published repository.

Please allow some hour to DNS to propagate and enjoy your website!

Bonus track: adding a subdomain

You can publish a subdomain like blog.mysite.com, creating and publishing another repository on GitHub with a CNAME file specifying the subdomain name in its content:

blog.mysite.com

In your DNS management interface, create another CNAME record with “blog” as hostname and pointing again to <mysite>.github.io. (dot included!)

GitHub will take care to publish the correct repository on the corresponding subdomain.