Author Topic: Static websites on GitHub pages for free  (Read 4189 times)

Lee Carlon

Static websites on GitHub pages for free
« on: October 10, 2018, 07:12:11 PM »
This is likely only interesting to the more technical members (any maybe not even them). I've bounced around between website hosts and website software for a while, but GitHub.com now provides HTTPS for all Github Pages (static websites), which means you can host your sites for free  on your own domain (the real upside for me is not having to worry about a database or keeping Wordpress or the plugins up to date, that used to drive me nuts).

I use Jekyll to edit my site locally, then commit the code to my GitHub repo, GitHub takes it from there and updates the site. The website code is publicly visible in the repo, but there is a paid option for private repos.

For anybody who's interested, you can learn about Github Pages here: https://pages.github.com
 and Jekyll here: https://jekyllrb.com. However, unless you're comfortable playing around with code I probably wouldn't bother.

There are a few themes available if you google. I found one that suited and tweaked it for what I want, my site www.leecarlon.com is pretty basic (and I need to optimize the images to load faster), but I don't plan on doing a lot with it other than showing my books and providing a sign up form for the newsletter.

« Last Edit: October 10, 2018, 07:16:25 PM by Lee Carlon »
 

guest14

  • Guest
Re: Static websites on GitHub pages for free
« Reply #1 on: October 10, 2018, 07:23:43 PM »
You say it's free - how does that work?
 

Lee Carlon

Re: Static websites on GitHub pages for free
« Reply #2 on: October 10, 2018, 07:45:42 PM »
You say it's free - how does that work?

GitHub was setup to host open source projects, as part of your account you can set up free Github Pages. Microsoft bought it recently, so maybe that'll change soon, but hopefully not. A lot of big companies use GitHub and I guess they underwrite the cost.
 

MHodmann

  • Blurb unlocked
  • *
  • Posts: 24
Re: Static websites on GitHub pages for free
« Reply #3 on: October 10, 2018, 10:26:36 PM »
Your site looks excellent, Lee. What theme did you use?

For another pen name I built a static html web site generator in Common Lisp a while ago. That static html is then uploaded to AWS. This seems like an interesting way to do a website, too. Might even be easier...
 

Lee Carlon

Re: Static websites on GitHub pages for free
« Reply #4 on: October 11, 2018, 07:18:40 AM »
Your site looks excellent, Lee. What theme did you use?

For another pen name I built a static html web site generator in Common Lisp a while ago. That static html is then uploaded to AWS. This seems like an interesting way to do a website, too. Might even be easier...

Thank you! I used grayscale: http://jekyllthemes.org/themes/grayscale/. There aren't as many options as Wordpress, but there are a few themes to choose from: http://jekyllthemes.org



 
The following users thanked this post: MHodmann