Introduction
In the area of web development everyone wants a website to showcase projects, portfolios, blogs or even ideas. Historically, domain ownership has been capturing many costs since it is characterized by owning a domain from the domain registrars. Nonetheless, GitHub has eased this process for developers due to free hosting facilities provided by GitHub Pages. Even more, the developers can associate a free public folder to their GitHub hosted site to create and host beautiful websites without having to spend a dime.
In this article, we will focus on the following aspects: how you can use GitHub Pages to host your website and get a free domain, how to set everything up and what are the strong and weak points of that solution. For any student that is starting web development or an experienced web developer, learning how to use GitHub for free web hosting is essential.
What is GitHub Pages?
GitHub Pages is a hosting service offered by GitHub mostly for developers who want to host project documentation, portfolios, blog, or even personal websites. This way, it enables users to build only static web sites right from GitHub repository.
GitHub Pages on the other hand uses Jekyll, which is a simple blog aware web fife generator in other words it is easy to take text files and transform them into a website. Developers can commit changes to source code and GitHub will build a site out of the content in that repository.
Key Features of GitHub Pages:
Free Hosting: GitHub Pages makes hosting completely free, meaning it is good for person websites, portfolios, or any other small website.
Easy Deployment: This makes it very easy for a user setup a website by just pushing code to a GitHub repository.
Custom Domain Support: site to a custom domain if they prefer to use such a domain instead of the GitHub exists in subdomain.
Exploring How to Host a Website with GitHub Pages
Now let me explain in details about using free domains with GitHub before familiarizing ourselves with how the GitHub Pages works. Here’s a step-by-step guide to getting started:
Create a GitHub Account: If you do not have it yet, you can open the GitHub account on the site called GitHub official site founded at github.com.
Create a New Repository: After creating an account, you will need to open a repository of your site files which is a new repository. As you remember, first you choose a name for your github repo and then create it, but you can name it whatever you like, however it is easier to use your GitHub username as your repository name (e.g. username.github.io).
Upload Website Files: Possible ways to create content are either uploading static .html files or to use static site generators (as Jekyll). It is required to make sure that your content is committed in the master branch if that’s the default branch for GitHub or in the main if the company uses the main branch.
Enable GitHub Pages: Navigate to settings on the repository, look for the “GitHub Pages” section, and choose the branch for your website, usually the one with head. GitHub will give you a URL that might look like username.github.io, and that points to your site.
Visit Your Website: Once you are done with GitHub Pages, you can then surf to the URL which GitHub tells you.
How to Get a Free Domain from GitHub
Domain is already created and works, but most people like to use own domain in order to make their site look more professional and easy to remember: username.github.io. Fortunately, for users who want to settle their own domain to this GitHub Page site, GitHub provides users the feature of linking custom domain for free. But for free domains, GitHub doesn’t provide website addresses directly, it provides sub-addresses in github.io.
But don’t worry, there is a way to obtain a free domain for use with GitHub Pages.
Step-by-Step Process to Set Up a Free Domain with GitHub Pages:
. Obtain a Free Domain
In fact, although GitHub does not provide the free TLDs, there are other third-party services that do enable you to have free domains on the internet. Some popular ones include:
Freenom: In as much as Freenom offers free domains, the do with domains of .tk, .ml, and .ga, .cf, and .gq extensions. These are suitable for individual purposes, portfolio or if the site will only be needed for a short period.
InfinityFree: This is another site that provides subdomains for free, but it also lets the users connect GitHub Pages site to a custom domain from Freenom or any other domain providers.
To get a free domain from Freenom, follow these steps:
Go to Freenom.
Look for an available domain name and select any of the free domain name extensions such as.tk.
There is no charge for registering the domain, this will only require developing an account.
- Configure DNS Settings for Your Site’s Own Domain
The next step when you have secured a free domain is to set the domain’s name servers to use GitHub’s GitHub Pages.
Go to Your Domain Provider’s Dashboard: Anyway, log into your account with Freenom or another domain registrar you used for your domain name registration and go to the DNS management section.
Set up DNS Records:
CNAME Record: Put in a CNAME (Canonical Name) record to map your domain to your GitHub Pages name (e.g, username.github.io). This informs other DNS servers that everybody who is attempting to go to your domain should be re-routed to go to GitHub Pages.
A Records: If you would prefer not to use a subdomain (for instance, linking to example.com instead of www.example.com) , you can also define A records that point to GitHub’s IP addresses – more details of which are available on the GitHub Pages site.
Wait for DNS Propagation: Some of the DNS changes may take sometime to reflect in the system. This could take anything from a few minutes to 48 hours.
- Add Your Custom Domain to GitHub Pages After setting up DNS for your custom domain, go to your GitHub repository and update the GitHub Pages settings:
Go to the repository that you have created to hold your GitHub Pages.
Navigate to the repository’s Settings, and find the GitHub Pages chapter.
In “Custom domain,” input the domain that you got so that it may be example.tk if it is available, or enter www.example.com.
Save the changes.
After that changes are saved and DNS propagated your website will be available on the custom domain you have used.
Advantages associated with the Use of GitHub Pages with a Free Domain
There are many advantages to using GitHub Pages with a free domain:
Cost-Effective: specifically, GitHub Pages is entirely free, which, along with the possibility to get a free domain from Freenom, means that your site can be free of charge at all, which is really good for students, people who do projects for fun, or just for small and non-profit projects.
Easy to Set Up: What is more, the GitHub Pages does not necessarily demand much configuring, the developers are free to start with the website even with the basic knowledge about servers and web hosting.
No Ads: Some of the free hosting services will have their ads posted on the websites they host. What makes the GitHub Pages appealing, there are no distracting advertisement pop-ups as seen with other web developers.
Integration with GitHub: This is even more convenient if you are already using GitHub as a version control system – you can also use it for web hosting. Another advantage that new users of GitHub Pages may not know is that the tool works with your repositories in a very smooth manner when making new changes.
Customizable: Despite the fact GitHub Pages is meant for static websites, one can include a number of tools and services to create more interactive functionality, for example, forms, analytics, or even blogs with the help of Jekyll.
Challenges associated with Utilizing the GitHub Pages and Free Domains
While GitHub Pages is an excellent platform for personal and small websites, there are a few limitations to be aware of:
Limited to Static Sites: GitHub Pages only allows to deploy HTML, CSS, and JavaScript as any form of server side processing is prohibited. Using GitHub pages has its disadvantage, especially if you require an active site, such as databases or server-side code.
Free Domains May Not Be Reliable: However, services like Freenom provide free domain, but it has its own disadvantage; for instance, the domain may expire or has limited assistance. Domain extensions such as .tk are often free and rather unprofessional and statistically can be viewed as untrustworthy to certain users.
Limited Customization for Free Domains: Custom domains for GitHub pages are not as flexible as paid hosting sites and this directly affects the ability of a user to manage DNS for their website.
Conclusion
GitHub Pages along with a free domain name is perfect for developers and content creators who do not want to spend a whole lot of money to build their website. For instance, one can obtain a free domain by signing up for Freenom or InfinityFree, and then host the site in GitHub.
Although this setup works nicely for such web projects as non-content management, portfolio, and projects’ galleries, it has some peculiarities, namely, less dynamic ability and dependable free domains. But for those who are just beginning with web development, or who want a cheap solution and a simple site, GitHub pages and a free domain will make it easy and quick to go online.
Once you have followed the steps written in this article, your site will be live and available under a custom domain name for free. No matter if the site will be used for private needs, as a second project or just as a portfolio in work, Git
