Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GitHub Pages with a custom root domain is slow

instantclick.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 93 posts

Re: GitHub Pages with a custom root domain is slow

#71

Post by colevscode »

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)

Instead of "redirect the root domain to the www subdomain using a DNS CNAME record" it should say "... using domain forwarding".

Most DNS hosts offer some mechanism for forwarding traffic from your apex domain to the www subdomain using a 301 (permanent) redirect. Then the www subdomain can be configured with a CNAME record.

For example, at Brace (http://brace.io) we offer a guide for configuring this if your domain is on godaddy. See step 3 at http://blog.brace.io/2014/01/19/custom-domains-godaddy/. (not an endorsement of godaddy)

(edited for clarity)

Re: GitHub Pages with a custom root domain is slow

#73

Post by dkulchenko »

jnewland wrote: post #64
dkulchenko wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can, but then you get automated emails from Github Support telling you that your DNS config is wrong and that you should be using CNAMEs rather than A records (since Cloudflare flattens the virtual CNAMEs to As if you do a DNS lookup).

What domain? I'll get an issue filed to stop sending warning emails in cases like this. Thanks!

It's studio.zerobrane.com (pointing to pkulchenko.github.io/ZeroBraneStudio); thanks for looking into it!

Re: GitHub Pages with a custom root domain is slow

#74

Post by tomfanning »

dknecht wrote: post #2

You can actually use CloudFlare and stay on Github pages. In the CloudFlare DNS editor you can point your root at github's cname address and everything will work. If you choose not to enable CloudFlare proxy service you can still use the DNS to flatten Github's cname. See http://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-cname-flattening-rfc-...

I don't believe that it is valid per RFC 1034 to set the root domain record to be a CNAME.

I found this out when I asked this question a while back: http://serverfault.com/questions/55528/set-root-domain-recor...

Re: GitHub Pages with a custom root domain is slow

#75

Post by geuis »

I'm not sure I agree 100% with the title being changed. Originally is was "GitHub Pages with a custom root domain loses you 35% of your visitors", which after reading the story is not really what its about.

Also, if mods are going to change titles at least get the grammar right. "Pages ... ARE slow" not "Pages ... IS slow".

Re: GitHub Pages with a custom root domain is slow

#76

Post by dang »

geuis wrote: post #75

I'm not sure I agree 100% with the title being changed. Originally is was "GitHub Pages with a custom root domain loses you 35% of your visitors", which after reading the story is not really what its about. Also, if mods are going to change titles at least get the grammar right. "Pages ... ARE slow" not "Pages ... IS slow".

Grammar, huh. Fighting words!

"GitHub Pages" is the name of a product, therefore it's singular. (One giveaway is the capital 'P'. If "pages" had been a generic plural, it would not have been capitalized.) The New York Times publishes articles every day, The Royal Tenenbaums is a Wes Anderson movie, and GitHub Pages, according to this article, is sometimes slow.

As for the claim "loses you 35% of your visitors", it is (a) dubious, (b) linkbait, and (c) violates the HN guideline against putting arbitrary numbers in titles. Happy to change it to something better if you or anyone suggest it—but editing that bit out was not a borderline call.

Re: GitHub Pages with a custom root domain is slow

#77

Post by bitJericho »

clarkdave wrote: post #68
bitJericho wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, here are a couple references that form my opinion: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/apex-domains http://www.hyperarts.com/blog/www-vs-non-www-for-your-canoni... No doubt there's ways around any problem with a naked domain, but why work so hard on something so trivial? No user has ever turned away from a website because it hadd "www." in front. That said, your naked domain surely needs to redirect to your "…

It's not hard work to skip the "www" these days. DNS providers like Cloudflare support CNAME-like functionality on the apex domain, and if you're using AWS then Route 53 provides special "alias" records which let you hook the zone apex on to an ELB, for example. I'm sure other providers have similar functionality. As for why, well, personally I prefer the look of a domain without the "www". It looks cleaner to me.

Those are fair enough reasons. I see being tied (permanently) to a provider like Cloudflare or AWS as a problem. I'd rather use the www and be allowed to move to providers that don't necessarily offer the same features, or to my own infrastructure where that is or is not an option.

Let's agree that for the most part it's a bad idea to change from www to naked or the other way around after the launch of a website (for seo reasons). So you have to pick one at launch and try to stick with it. Why choose the option that looks nicer but has problems associated with it and potential vendors not supporting it, vs the one that arguably looks messy but that all users everywhere are well accustomed to and has none of the configuration issues that affect naked domains?

There's postmortems out there about using naked domains and DDoS attacks. There's issues with load balancing, with domain configuration, with cookies.

If your website gets overrun by HNers, what's your plan to compensate quickly? How much of your plan is bogged down by the fact that you're on a naked domain?

Re: GitHub Pages with a custom root domain is slow

#79

Post by Kudos »

tomfanning wrote: post #74
dknecht wrote: post #2

You can actually use CloudFlare and stay on Github pages. In the CloudFlare DNS editor you can point your root at github's cname address and everything will work. If you choose not to enable CloudFlare proxy service you can still use the DNS to flatten Github's cname. See http://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-cname-flattening-rfc-...

I don't believe that it is valid per RFC 1034 to set the root domain record to be a CNAME. I found this out when I asked this question a while back: http://serverfault.com/questions/55528/set-root-domain-recor...

You should try reading his link.

Re: GitHub Pages with a custom root domain is slow

#80

Post by jnewland »

dkulchenko wrote: post #73
jnewland wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What domain? I'll get an issue filed to stop sending warning emails in cases like this. Thanks!

It's studio.zerobrane.com (pointing to pkulchenko.github.io/ZeroBraneStudio); thanks for looking into it!

If you have a subdomain, there's no need to use Cloudflare - if you CNAME this domain to pkulchenko.github.io you'll use GitHub's CDN automatically.
Post reply on HN