
Bringing GitLab Pages to the Community Edition - sytse
https://about.gitlab.com/2016/12/24/were-bringing-gitlab-pages-to-community-edition/?
======
dijit
I was looking for this feature a couple of days ago and saw it was in the EE.
Which sucked for me and my tiny community- so I'm super pleased to hear this.

One of the things I'm not sure about though, is how does gitlab handle the
domain per user? Do I delegate DNS to the gitlab instance itself or something?

~~~
sytse
Glad to hear we made the right decision. We open sourced it because we learned
that small organizations were interested and your comment is another
indication of that.

Regarding your question. I assume you're talking about a self hosted instance
that offers a FQDN (not domain) in the form of username.yourgitlabhostname.com
For documentation about this please see
[https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/pages/administration.html#dns-
con...](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/pages/administration.html#dns-
configuration)

BTW For instructions how to use your own domain see
[https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/pages/README.html](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/pages/README.html)
"As a last step, you need to configure your DNS and add a CNAME pointing to
your user/group page. Click on the Details button of a domain for further
instructions."

~~~
dwheeler
This is great news!

I lead the "CII Best Practices Badge" project for OSS projects - if you have
an OSS project, and you meet certain requirements, you can get a badge. One
criterion is that "The project sites (website, repository, and download URLs)
MUST support HTTPS using TLS.": [https://github.com/linuxfoundation/cii-best-
practices-badge/...](https://github.com/linuxfoundation/cii-best-practices-
badge/blob/master/doc/criteria.md#sites_https)

I think making GitLab pages part of the community edition will make it easier
to meet this criterion. Congrats, and thanks!

~~~
sytse
Cool, I didn't consider that use case but it makes a lot of sense.

BTW I love the CII Best Practices project and GitLab is proudly wearing the
badge on [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-
ce/#gitlab](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/#gitlab)

------
mc42
This also seems to be a direct result of GitHub's move to limiting GitHub
Pages [1]

Good work, and keep it up GitLab Team! Lovely product, and well designed.

[1] - [https://help.github.com/articles/what-is-github-
pages/#usage...](https://help.github.com/articles/what-is-github-pages/#usage-
limits)

~~~
sytse
Thanks for your kind words!

EDIT: Job has commented in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13250453](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13250453)

The announcement from GitHub might have triggered us. GitHub Pages was limited
about 3 days go
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13227863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13227863)

Job asked for votes 3 days ago [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-
ce/issues/14605#note_20...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-
ce/issues/14605#note_20312668)

Looking at our internal chat logs it seems that the announcement got us
thinking about pages again. But the decision to open source it was based on
what kind of people used it (more small organizations than we thought, fewer
large organizations than we thought).

I've asked Job to comment too.

BTW We're not sure if we'll limit GitLab.com Pages at some point, see "GitLab
Pages with very high traffic (currently unlimited even in the free plan)" from
[https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-com/#free-
forever](https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-com/#free-forever) Of course you now
always have the option to host your own.

~~~
drewcrawford
Hi sytes. Thanks so much for this. I was active on the thread trying to get it
added to CE, and it makes a big difference.

One thing GL is still missing in its licensing model is a good story for my
usecase. I run a GL install that's open to the public so users can report bugs
in my software, but there are only 2 real "internal" users. I picked up 50
"users" last month, who just made an issue or two and drove away.

The current model forces me to choose either CE (no paid features for anyone)
or EE ($1950/mo). That is what drives some of the disconnect on features like
Pages, I'm not going to pay five figures a year for no matter what's in EE.

But if I could pay $300 a year, and get either some paid features, or paid
features for some users, that would be pretty easy. Then there is something to
do in this situation besides complain that everything isn't free, and creates
more opportunities to get invested into GitLab.

As long as there's a $25,000 gap between price tiers you will have these cases
where people are flamewarring about whether some feature makes it into CE.

~~~
jobvandervoort
Just to clarify, our pricing [0] is per year. So the cost for 50 users is
$1950 a year, $162,50 a month for Enterprise Edition starter.

We have been thinking about a model that would allow us a more smooth ramp
from CE to EE, hence the change to EE starter and Premium. However, this
doesn't mean certain attractive features might still land in paid tiers.

I'd love to get more feedback on this.

[0]: [https://about.gitlab.com/products/](https://about.gitlab.com/products/)

~~~
drewcrawford
Right, but your licensing is per user per year. I add 50 NEW users in a month.
Each of them use the product for about 20 minutes, but I believe I would need
to license them for an entire year.

~~~
sytse
If you disable the accounts of users they no longer count towards your
license. So you could consider deactivating accounts that have been inactive
for more than a month. Anyway, feel free to get in touch with sales@ our
domain to discuss the options.

------
sofaofthedamned
Superb. Thank you, Sytse, and have a great holiday!

~~~
sytse
Glad to hear you're happy! I don't want to take credit for this, it was mostly
the wider community politely asking in [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-
ce/issues/14605](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/14605)

We're thankful that the conversation was data driven and everyone assumed best
intentions from each other. In the last few days we released 8.15 with auto
deploy and web terminal
[https://about.gitlab.com/2016/12/22/gitlab-8-15-released/](https://about.gitlab.com/2016/12/22/gitlab-8-15-released/)
and the company achieved its monthly, quarterly, and yearly sales goal. I
can't think of a better way to celebrate and be amazed at what we did together
in 2016.

