Redirects with GitHub Pages

Ever have a problem purchasing domains to use later? I do, and started to collect a few without a destination or time to set up a use. Some of these domains had secure only top level domains (.dev & .app specifically). I wanted to set a couple of these domains to redirect here, studioember.com. Unfortunately, Hover only allows redirects for regular domains that support http connections, basically anything besides the TLD’s I have.

GitHub Pages

I will quickly go over the first step in this process, setting up a standard GitHub Page with a custom domain. At the time of writing, GitHub has a great tutorial that specifies these domain records:

Then, in your redirect project, create a CNAME file with the custom domain. See the CNAME file in my profile redirect repository for an example.

file: CNAME

nathangrey.dev

Once you have a pages site published, DNS resolving, and everything is green in the repository settings, you can set up the redirects.

Redirecting

By default GitHub pages uses Jekyll for a frontend. This redirect setup uses the standard Jekyll markdown files and includes a simple plugin to handle the redirects.

Below is the full basic setup for a root redirect

file _config.yml

theme: jekyll-theme-cayman # any theme is fine
plugins:
  - jekyll-redirect-from   # Relevant plugin

file index.md

---
title: Studio Ember
redirect_to: https://studioember.com
---

This setup gives the bare minimum to redirect a root domain to another url. To add other paths or a fallback for all paths, add the explicit path as a markdown file and a 404.md file. For instance, on my profile site, I set up a redirect to Linkedin with a simple file.

file linkedin.md

---
title: My LinkedIn Profile
redirect_to: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangrey/
---

This file takes the path from nathangrey.dev/linkedin and resolves to https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathangrey/. Super simple, but a quick way to have a portfolio type link to hand out and be able to change the destination after the fact.

Hope this helps, and the full repository can be found on my GitHub profile repository.