Github Pages Static Website Hosting

How It Works?

GitHub Pages connects a repository branch with a domain alias and publishes the branch as the source for a website.

In the context of the other cloud platforms the git repository represents the storage and the pages platform is the CDN.

GitHub Pages publishes any static files that you push to your repository. If you publish your site from a source branch, GitHub Pages will use Jekyll to build your site by default. With YouDoCMS static site generator Jekyll is disabled thus skipping the build process by creating an empty file called .nojekyll in the root of your local build folder.

YouDoCMS headless CMS Integrates with the git command line to deploy and push a website built on your local machine to your git repository. During the build process the base URL is updated with the GitHub custom domain.

GitHub Pages Headless CMS

If you are a GitHub user the Pages option allows static site hosting directly from a GitHub repository including free hosting.  YouDoCMS headless CMS integrates with the GitHub CLI to manage content, build and deploy without using the terminal.

GitHub Pages is available for static sites only and Pages supports custom domains and SLL certificates. However it does not include serverless functions or any options to customise the CDN. There is a limit of one site per GitHub account and organization, and unlimited project sites. A further limitation of the pages platform is the inability to create a 301 redirect from old to new content as this cannot be done via the CDN.

GitHub Pages Performance

GTMetrix test results for our home page tested on 19/12/2022 show GitHub Pages achieving an an average Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) time of 1.2s which is the slowest CDN we have tested. For comparison AWS (460ms), Azure(495ms), Cloudflare (393ms) and Firebase (468ms). 

LCP measures how long it takes for the largest content element e.g. an image or heading text on your page to become visible. For a good user experience, aim for an LCP of 1.2 seconds or less.

The 2022 Web Almanac analysis of the performance of hosted content management systems shows that less than half of the tested CMS sites achieve a “good” LCP of under 2.5 seconds for desktop or mobile.