Harri Mähönen # a .plan for software engineer



STATIC WEBSITE HOSTING WITH GITHUB PAGES AND CLOUDFLARE DNS

November 9th, 2021

I have had a placeholder text on my domain mahonen.org for over a decade. I
have hosted it always on virtual private servers (VPS) in the hopes that I can
run my own personal projects there. I never have. The last time I logged to the
VPS was over a year ago.

My requirements were simple. I would like to:

- Edit my website on my laptop with any tools I prefer
- Use a custom domain
- Have SSL work out of the box
- Publish easily

I searched around Hacker News (my go to place) and found a thread of cheap
static hosting with custom domain.

The solution is perfect:

- Cloudflare DNS
- GitHub Pages for static hosting with custom domain support.
- Free as in beer.

First I created GitHub Pages by:

1. Making a special public repository with my username. If your username is
   foobar, create a repository with name foobar.

2. Configuring Pages for the repository by going to Settings. I modified the
   branch to master instead of main and added a custom domain
   (ie. www.mydomain.com).

3. Set up a repository for pages and made a simple index.html. Push it to the
   repository.

4. Access your site via: <username>.github.io/<username>/

Then, I configured Cloudflare DNS by:

1. Adding a new domain. Cloudflare helpfully imported all my DNS records.

2. Removing unnecessary entries.

3. Created a new CNAME pointing to <username>.github.io

And finally I configured Cloudflare's nameservers to my domain registrar
(Namecheap).

It works beautifully. I can just edit my site or generate it with any static
site generator and publishing changes is just a git push away.