GitHub Page Build Warning - New CDN

The RayHightower.com blog is built on Octopress and hosted on GitHub Pages. Recently, after I deployed a site update, GitHub emailed me a Page build warning message. Since this was just a warning, I ignored it while I attacked more pressing tasks (not always a good idea).

Today I finally took the time to research the topic so I could figure out what to do next. This article is the result of that research.

##What the Message Means Here are the important points of the of the Page build warning message:

• GitHub introduced a content delivery network (CDN) for faster page loads and protection against denial of sevice (DOS) attacks.
• If you do nothing to your GitHub Pages site, your pages will continue to load normally. People who visit your site will see no difference.
• If you want the benefits of the CDN, follow the instructions given in GitHub’s blog articles.

The Original Message

Here’s the original message. If you’re satisfied with the above translation, you can skip this section.

The page build completed successfully, but returned the following warning:

GitHub Pages recently underwent some improvements (https://github.com/blog/1715-faster-more-awesome-github-pages) to make your site faster and more awesome, but we’ve noticed that rayhightower.com isn’t properly configured to take advantage of these new features. While your site will continue to work just fine, updating your domain’s configuration offers some additional speed and performance benefits. Instructions on updating your site’s IP address can be found at https://help.github.com/articles/setting-up-a-custom-domain-with-github-pages#step-2-configure-dns-records, and of course, you can always get in touch with a human at support@github.com. For the more technical minded folks who want to skip the help docs: your site’s DNS records are pointed to a deprecated IP address.

For information on troubleshooting Jekyll see:

https://help.github.com/articles/using-jekyll-with-pages#troubleshooting

If you have any questions please contact us at https://github.com/contact.

First: Check the CNAME File

Since RayHightower.com was configured for Octopress a few years ago, it already had a source/CNAME file. To check the contents:

$ cat source/CNAME
rayhightower.com

$ 

The CNAME file looks fine, according to the GitHub’s blog. Time for the next step.

Next: Domain Records

The domain is registered with DNSimple, so the process was relatively quick.

1. Go into DNSimple’s advanced editor for the domain.
2. Click Add a Record and select ALIAS.
3. Leave Name blank.
4. Next to Alias for enter the GitHub Pages endpoint. In my case, the endpoint is rayhightower.github.io.

More information on GitHub Pages and DNSimple.

I set TTL to 1 minute to encourage the changes to propagate quickly. If you know of a better configuration choice for TTL, please let me know in the comments below.

Expect Propagation Delays

DNS changes can take up to a day to propagate. Delays tend to be shorter with DNSimple because time-to-live (TTL) can be set as low as one minute for some records. Updates will be posted here as I learn more.