From GitHub to GitLab pages

I started this site on GitHub Pages because:

1. I was already using GitHub
2. I didn’t want to have to deal with hosting
3. It’s free

But I’d been meaning to set up my own domain for a while¹ and although GitHub pages supports custom domains it didn’t seem to support HTTPS on custom domains. And there’s no way I’m setting up a web site in 2018 without HTTPS.

It turns out that support for HTTPS with custom domains is gradually being rolled out now, and it’s possible to set it up yourself. But there’s no mention of this in the documentation, and word from GitHub Support doesn’t suggest it’ll be official any time soon. And it hasn’t been rolled out to my account yet.

So I looked into GitLab as an alternative. I liked what I found. Not only is there extensive documentation, but there’s also an official tutorial.

I won’t say it was easy, but unless something has gone terribly wrong you’re reading this over a secure connection certified by Let’s Encrypt.

I followed the instructions to add my domain to my GitLab pages settings, and to configure the DNS records for my domain. There are a few helpful links to how-to pages for specific hosts, but none for my registration service. Fortunately, the instruction provided were sufficient.

Before I delved into HTTPS I wanted to make sure the domain setup was behaving as expected. It was not. When I tried to open a link to my site I got a 404 back. The DNS record was directing the request to the correct server, but the server wasn’t associating the request with my GitLab Pages repository. It was then that I realised the project name still ended in github.com, not gitlab.com. When I imported my GitHub repository, the import function on GitLab copied the original repo’s name, ignoring the new name it allowed me to enter. No matter, I thought, there’s an option to change the name. So I did that. But still my site threw up a 404. It seems that I’d only changed the name of my project, i.e., the display name. I had to hunt down the setting to change the name of the repository itself (Settings > Advanced Settings > Rename repository). But once I’d updated that I could finally access my site via marklapierre.net.

And, finally, the HTTPS configuration. I followed the tutorial and ran the letsencrypt-auto CLI to set up a challenge response that would confirm for Let’s Encrypt that I control marklapierre.net. Unfortunately, at some point after the instructions were written GitLab Pages and Jekyll stopped accepting permalinks with dots in them. Fortunately, someone pointed this out in the comments on the tutorial along with the solution—end the permalink with / not .html.

So now I have a secure site on my own domain. Huzzah!

[Update: on the same day I published this, GitHub announced support for HTTPS on custom domains. Nice.]

1. Someone else got marklapierre.com. Last update in 2014? C'mon Mark, you're killing me!