I have been using the blog subdomain for this website since I started my blog around 2013 (on Blogger, before I moved to GitHub Pages). I did not want to build something myself for publishing my articles and Blogger gave me the option of using my own custom domain. Since I was already using www on my main website, I decided to go with blog instead.

I have wanted to consolidate my websites in one domain name for a long time to have all my content available in a single place. This is also normally recommended for SEO.

However, it wasn’t until I read about Webmention, IndieWeb, POSSE, and Web sign-in that I decided to finally go ahead and move all my content under my primary domain: if I am going to use my personal web address as my ID then I need to decide what domain name I want to employ for that.

Should I use www?

So the first step was to decide the primary domain for my website: www.juliotrigo.com.

Here you can read about why it is recommended to use www instead of apex domains (also called bare, naked, or root domains) as the primary domain, which should be part of the canonical website URLs.

Migration changes with GitHub Pages

There is some documentation about configuring and managing custom domains with GitHub Pages out there.

These are the changes I made:

  • Code (diff):
# Jekyll _config.yml

-url: "https://blog.juliotrigo.com"
+url: "https://www.juliotrigo.com"

# I have started with play with https://www.w3.org/TR/webmention/
webmentions:
-  username: blog.juliotrigo.com
+  username: www.juliotrigo.com

# CNAME

-blog.juliotrigo.com
+www.juliotrigo.com
  • DNS:
# DNS config

DNS ENTRY       TYPE            DESTINATION/TARGET
@               A               185.199.108.153
@               A               185.199.109.153
@               A               185.199.110.153
@               A               185.199.111.153
blog            CNAME           www.juliotrigo.com.
www             CNAME           my-subdomain.github.io.

GitHub Pages limitations

GitHub Pages had not been providing me all the freedom that I needed lately. For instance, by restricting the Jekyll dependency versions that I can use.

Additionally, I had a few HTTPS issues with my apex domain after the migration, as explained here:

GitHub doesn’t currently support creating a certificate that covers both your root domain and your www subdomain. We only generate a certificate for the exact domain that you specify in the custom domain input box. (2018-05-10)

I also wanted to redirect the old subdomain (blog) to the primary one (www).

Even if there’s already a way of solving some of those things, I decided to give Netlify a go.

Migrating from GitHub Pages to Netlify

It was extremely simple to have it all set up with Netlify.

As part of this process, I had to ensure that:

  • The website was up and running with no errors
  • HTTPS was enabled and working
  • All the relevant URLs were redirected to my primary domain

1) Set up, build and deploy the website

It was done with just a few simple steps:

  • Sign up on Netlify
  • Select the source code repository (no code changes were required)
  • Create a new site
  • Verify/amend the site settings (the default values were good)
Build command: jekyll build
Publish directory: _site/
  • Set environment variables to be used during the build process
JEKYLL_ENV: production
  • Build and deploy the website

2) HTTPS setup

  • Netlify:
my-subdomain.netlify.app: Default subdomain
www.juliotrigo.com: Primary domain
juliotrigo.com: Redirects automatically to primary domain
blog.juliotrigo.com: Domain alias

Your site has HTTPS enabled
Domains: blog.juliotrigo.com, juliotrigo.com, www.juliotrigo.com
Auto-renews in 3 months
  • DNS:
# DNS config

DNS ENTRY       TYPE            DESTINATION/TARGET
@               A               104.198.14.52
blog            CNAME           www.juliotrigo.com.
www             CNAME           my-subdomain.netlify.app.

3) Fix redirects

Add redirect rules:

# _redirects

# Redirect default Netlify subdomain to primary domain
https://my-subdomain.netlify.app/* https://www.juliotrigo.com/:splat 301!

# Redirect old subdomain to primary domain
https://blog.juliotrigo.com/* https://www.juliotrigo.com/:splat 301!

Include the _redirects file in the folder where the generated site will be placed (_site):

# Jekyll _config.yml

include: [_redirects]

4) Verify all the relevant URLs

Check that all the relevant URLs are redirected to my canonical URL: https://www.juliotrigo.com.

# www subdomain
http://www.juliotrigo.com
http://www.juliotrigo.com/
https://www.juliotrigo.com
https://www.juliotrigo.com/

# Apex domain
http://juliotrigo.com
http://juliotrigo.com/
https://juliotrigo.com
https://juliotrigo.com/

# The old blog subdomain
http://blog.juliotrigo.com
http://blog.juliotrigo.com/
https://blog.juliotrigo.com
https://blog.juliotrigo.com/

# Netlify default subdomain
http://my-subdomain.netlify.app
http://my-subdomain.netlify.app/
https://my-subdomain.netlify.app
https://my-subdomain.netlify.app/

Things I’ve learned

  • The benefits of using www as the primary domain
  • The functionality that Netlify provides on their Starter free plan is quite powerful and simple to use
  • The SSL/TLS certificate that Netlify issues can cover extra subdomains (free of charge)
  • The _redirects file is a simple way of doing HTTP redirects

2020-05-13 - Update:

Set environment variables to be used during the build process.