Custom domains w/GitHub Pages and Heroku permalink

I slapped together an app on the MEAN stack and deployed it out on Heroku so that people could RSVP to our wedding (demo,source). It allowed us to automatically aggregate the guest list. After the wedding, we wanted to use the domain we had purchased somehow. We considered a travel blog, but, as you know, I’ve already got a blog that I barely manage.

Instead, we decided to create a digital version of something we had seen while visiting married friends: a map that showed where in the world they had visited(source). Given my success using Jekyll on GitHub Pages and wanting to keep open the possibility of doing some more dynamic stuff later.

Setting up the domain to work with the Heroku deployment was straightforward as Heroku has some pretty solid documentation around it. Doing the same with GitHub Project Pages was a little harder to figure out.

First, create a CNAME file in the root of your project with one domain name in it: www.yourdomain.com. Commit and push.

Next, in your DNS manager, setup a CNAME record for the www subdomain that points to yourusername.github.io.

Then, depending on what your DNS provider supports, you need to do one of the following:

Finally, wait til your name servers update:

   dig yourdomain.com +nostats +nocomments +nocmd

This is what takes the longest, so be patient.

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