

Get Started With GitHub Pages (Plus Bonus Jekyll) - getdavidhiggins
http://24ways.org/2013/get-started-with-github-pages/

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sheetjs
One warning with gh pages: sometimes they can't handle a flood of users and
report "503 Backend is Unhealthy". This unfortunately happened to me last
month when
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6722197](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6722197)
was on the front page here ([http://oss.sheetjs.com](http://oss.sheetjs.com)).

Good news is that they at least check the status:
[https://status.github.com/messages/2013-11-13](https://status.github.com/messages/2013-11-13)

~~~
jwcrux
Interesting- I wonder if that's just project pages. I keep my blog
([http://jordan-wright.github.com/blog](http://jordan-wright.github.com/blog))
on Pages, had a few things hit the front page but never reached a limit.

Thanks for the heads up, though.

~~~
sheetjs
It's an organization page:
[https://github.com/SheetJS/SheetJS.github.io](https://github.com/SheetJS/SheetJS.github.io)

(configured with a custom domain as per
[https://help.github.com/articles/setting-up-a-custom-
domain-...](https://help.github.com/articles/setting-up-a-custom-domain-with-
pages) )

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nilved
I love (and host my blog on) Pages, but really can't stand Jekyll. The
template language, Liquid, is incredibly restrictive because GitHub wants to
sandbox you. I would suggest using nanoc, Middleman, Stasis or similar and
compiling it locally. I myself use a hacked Rails app that spits out static
HTML.[1]

Keep in mind that you also don't control things like HTTP headers, which are
very important for a static site. You want to cache assets forever, pages for
a while; and you probably want to fine-tune your gzip settings or precompile
gzip files as part of your compile process. These things are possible with
your own server and AWS but not Pages. Its benefits are simplicity and cost,
but they come at the cost of power and performance.

[1]:
[https://github.com/devlinzed/devlinzed.com](https://github.com/devlinzed/devlinzed.com)

~~~
bobfunk
Check out my startup BitBalloon
([https://www.bitballoon.com](https://www.bitballoon.com)) - as simple (or
simpler) as GH pages, but with all the right caching headers set out of the
box and built-in gzipping and image compression.

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yodasw16
Really great article for anyone just getting started with hosting something on
Pages. Anna breaks everything down so it's very simple. I had just finished
building my personal blog using Jekyll and Pages when this came out. Would
have been a nice resource.

I did have a stupid issue with not understanding how Github compiles Jekyll
that I totally didn't understand after reading the docs, so I posted a little
thing about it for anyone else who might be stupid, like me:
[http://davidgillhespy.com/2013/12/18/pushing-jekyll-to-
githu...](http://davidgillhespy.com/2013/12/18/pushing-jekyll-to-github-
pages.html)

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krrishd
Personally, I prefer Harp[0] over Jekyll, simply because while it provides the
metadata features of Jekyll, it also does all my asset pipelining and allows
me to use a multitude of templating languages. It's also less opinionated in
terms of file structure, and I host my blog with it on github pages for that
reason as well.

[0] [http://HarpJS.com](http://HarpJS.com)

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dangoldin
I've been hosting my personal blog on GitHub pages for a year now and it's
been great. One shortcut I took is starting with Jekyll Bootstrap
([http://jekyllbootstrap.com/](http://jekyllbootstrap.com/)) instead of
starting from scratch.

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Sir_Cmpwn
I'm hoping GitHub will update their copy of Jekyll at some point.

