Goal: to have the URL http://projects.tomkeays.com point to my https://github.com/tomkeays/tomkeays.github.io GitHub Pages repo.
The GitHub Pages documentation is actually quite good, but I decided I should write down more specifically what I had to do to set it up with my host.
The CNAME file, in my case, needed to point to http://projects.tomkeays.com. When I was ready, I added it to my github.com/tomkeays/tomkeays.github.io GitHub Pages repo. That part took effect immediately, such that going to my GitHub Pages URL, http://tomkeays.github.io, immediately redirected me to http://projects.tomkeays.com. Bluehost reported there was no such server because, at this point, there wasn’t.
Now I had to create a corresponding DNS record with my web hosting provider that represented the content being hosted in my GitHub Pages.
- Using cPanel in Bluehost, select domains and then zone editor.
- In my case, I selected the domain ‘tomkeays.com’ from the drop down menu.
- In the “Add DNS Record” section, I filled out the “Host Record” as “projects”, since the destination was going to be ‘projects.tomkeays.com’.
- The “Type” was set to “CNAME” — rather than “A” (“alias”) — since I’m not replacing the entire ‘tomkeays.com’ domain with GitHub Pages, just the ‘projects’ subdomain.
- The “Points To” contains “tomkeays.github.io” where my GitHub Pages were served from before I added the CNAME file to the repo.
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Note: You should not create a new subdomain in Bluehost from the domains > subdomains cPanel option. You only use that option when you are creating a subdomain that will be served out of a directory in your Bluehost account.
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Once you click the “Add Record” button, the new CNAME will appear in the list.
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It takes a few minutes (up to 4 hours) for the new alias to propagate across the DNS server network. You can check the status of the CNAME request by typing this command in the terminal. Of course, you would substitute your domain for mine.
dig projects.tomkeays.com +nostats +nocomments +nocmd
