Configuring Github Pages With a Custom Domain

  • 14th Jan 2023
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  • 2 min read
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  • Tags: 
  • github

Table of Contents

To setup my custom domain I went through the following steps:

  1. Verify Domain: I followed these steps to verify. Note that this was done using my GitHub accounts settings and not the repositories settings.
  2. Configuring my subdomain: Next I configured my subdomain to be used as my custom domain with GitHub pages by following these steps which involved adding a CNAME record to my DNS settings with my domain registrar. Note that as I was using a subdomain adding a CNAME record was all that was needed (however if I was to use an apex domain, I would have needed to add A and AAAA records too pointing to GitHub’s ip addresses).
  3. Add CNAME file: You need to add a file called CNAME to the root of your generated static site that contains your host name only (i.e. for this site til.softinio). As I use Hugo, I put this in the static directory as when the site is created it will be put in the root. Here is an example.
  4. Configuring GitHub Pages: Go to your repositories settings and select pages. Enter your domain name, save it and click check. Tick the box to enforce https.

Notes

  • This TIL does not cover setting up GitHub actions to build and deploy your code. Here is a sample.
  • You need to have your site deployed at least once so that the gh-pages branch is created so that you can set the site source branch in your repositories pages settings.
  • To make sure your GitHub actions is able to create the gh-pages branch, go to your repositories settings, then click Actions then General and under the workflow permissions section make sure the read and write permissions is selected and saved.

References