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GitHub Pages with a custom root domain is slow

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Re: GitHub Pages with a custom root domain is slow

#21

Post by dieulot »

pilif wrote: post #15

>The short solution is, instead of using yourdomain.com, use www.yourdomain.com. Then, redirect the root domain to the www subdomain using a DNS CNAME record. The root can't be a CNAME because no other record with the same name aside of a CNAME can exist. Your domain root also has one SOA and two NS records (and probably one more more MX records if you want to receive mail) See RFC 1912 (Section 2.4)

Damn, didn’t know that. Thanks, I’ll update.

Edit: Done, seeing changes will need an F5.

Re: GitHub Pages with a custom root domain is slow

#22

Post by Joeboy »

prottmann wrote: post #16

I don't believe the lose. On a GitHub page are programming specific solutions for a problem a developer has. When somebody search for a problem or find a link to a GitHub Project, he/she will visit the page. All others don't have an urgent problem to solve, so you loose only users, that not need your solution. Can live with it. ;-)

That's what I thought too, although as far as I can tell it's possible to host any content on github pages. I suspect the majority of it is programming projects though, and programmers are not going to give up that easily.

Re: GitHub Pages with a custom root domain is slow

#23

Post by ctz »

dublinben wrote: post #4

I think that this can vary quite a bit. My simple GitHub page loads in roughly 1 second. I don't think it's ever taken as long as 5 seconds. The linked site loads in less than half a second, but it costs $5 a month just for a simple page.

I have the same experience (http://jbp.io).

But I noticed that my DNS zone is quite different to how Github now tell you to do it (I have an A record to 204.232.175.78). So perhaps that is a factor.

Re: GitHub Pages with a custom root domain is slow

#25

Post by pilif »

dieulot wrote: post #21
pilif wrote: post #15

>The short solution is, instead of using yourdomain.com, use www.yourdomain.com. Then, redirect the root domain to the www subdomain using a DNS CNAME record. The root can't be a CNAME because no other record with the same name aside of a CNAME can exist. Your domain root also has one SOA and two NS records (and probably one more more MX records if you want to receive mail) See RFC 1912 (Section 2.4)

Damn, didn’t know that. Thanks, I’ll update. Edit: Done, seeing changes will need an F5.

Note that some DNS providers hack around the issue (like CloudFlate by pretending your CNAME was in-fact an A record http://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-cname-flattening-rfc-...), but if you're self-hosting DNS or your DNS provider doesn't do any special handling, then you can't have a root CNAME

Re: GitHub Pages with a custom root domain is slow

#26

Post by davidcelis »

buttscicles wrote: post #8
dublinben wrote: post #4

I think that this can vary quite a bit. My simple GitHub page loads in roughly 1 second. I don't think it's ever taken as long as 5 seconds. The linked site loads in less than half a second, but it costs $5 a month just for a simple page.

If you're using github pages you're only hosting flat files, so S3 is another viable option.

That's not necessarily true. My own site is a Jekyll site. To host that on S3, I'd need to generate it first and upload the generated files as opposed to my source files. Now that's not really a big deal, but I do enjoy the convenience of only having to do a `git push` to deploy my site on Pages.

That being said, I notice times similar to another commenter above, around 1-2s usually. I don't think I've seen a five second load time.

Re: GitHub Pages with a custom root domain is slow

#27

Post by lazerwalker »

davidcelis wrote: post #26
buttscicles wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're using github pages you're only hosting flat files, so S3 is another viable option.

That's not necessarily true. My own site is a Jekyll site. To host that on S3, I'd need to generate it first and upload the generated files as opposed to my source files. Now that's not really a big deal, but I do enjoy the convenience of only having to do a `git push` to deploy my site on Pages. That being said, I notice times similar to another commenter above, around 1-2s usually. I don't think I've seen a five se…

This sounds like the sort of thing that could easily be automated using a five-line Bash (Ruby, Python, etc) script.

Re: GitHub Pages with a custom root domain is slow

#28

Post by 3pt14159 »

Joeboy wrote: post #13

Is 5s really such a problem? I don't think I'd bail out of a website because it took 5s to load, unless it was something I didn't particularly want to see anyway. Which I guess might be why people didn't stick around for the tests from which the 35% number is drawn.

you lose about 10% after 1 second, and about 5% every second after that. So yes, it is a very big deal.

Re: GitHub Pages with a custom root domain is slow

#29

Post by krenoten »

Joeboy wrote: post #13

Is 5s really such a problem? I don't think I'd bail out of a website because it took 5s to load, unless it was something I didn't particularly want to see anyway. Which I guess might be why people didn't stick around for the tests from which the 35% number is drawn.

Yes. Numerous reputable entities have published reports demonstrating that users notice quite a lot. Amazon claims that every 100ms costs them 1% of revenue. Google claims 500ms costs them 20% of traffic. 5 seconds is a fucking eternity, and anything you expose to users on the web with such horrible performance will suffer greatly because of if. One exception may be banks. Users are more forgiving of latency as their financial connection to it increases.

Re: GitHub Pages with a custom root domain is slow

#30

Post by probonogeek »

Can someone explain how "Visitors to this site’s index page have an average page load time of 3.5 seconds. 70% of those are here for the first time. 3.5 ÷ 70% = 5. So first time visitors have an average page load time of 5 seconds." makes any kind of mathematical sense?

If only 10% of visitors were first time, would that mean their average page load speed was 35 seconds? This is some crazy use of the word "average".

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