Goodbye GitHub Pages
Internet
After three months of hosting my site on GitHub pages, last week I updated my DNS records and rsync’d my site back to my webhost here in Sydney.
It wasn’t a decision I made lightly (or nginx, as it were). For what it does, and despite it’s horribly creepy logo, GitHub Pages is a decent service. Prior to using them, I was an hg and subversion guy with a WordPress site; now I’m also a git guy who’s migrated his site to Jekyll and generates static pages like nobody’s business. I’m eternally grateful for both of these things.
Unfortunately, GitHub Pages and I didn’t end up jiving. I missed some of the fine grain control and sense of security that comes from hosting my own stuff. Perhaps as a result of my ridiculous number of posts, commits would often take hours to be reflected in the generated site (if at all), and my RSS feeds were often outdated.
It was a fun experiment, but as I’ve repeatedly learned over the years when using other services, I always come back to self hosting. For my needs, it’s just a better fit.
