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Github Pages Custom DNS Gotcha

Brian Takita
Authors:Brian Takita
Posted on:September 5, 2016

Fixing a DNS-related 404 error with Github Pages.

I set up briantakita.com using Github Pages to btakita.github.io.

To set up the DNS, I followed the official instructions and github pages with namecheap.

I created the CNAME file with:

briantakita.com

and set up the DNS on Namecheap.

However, I got the 404 page on github.

So I ran

$ dig briantakita.com +nostats +nocomments +nocmd

; <<>> DiG 9.8.4-rpz2+rl005.12-P1 <<>> briantakita.com +nostats +nocomments +nocmd
;; global options: +cmd
;briantakita.com.       IN  A
briantakita.com.  1627  IN  A 204.232.175.78

$ dig www.briantakita.com +nostats +nocomments +nocmd

; <<>> DiG 9.8.4-rpz2+rl005.12-P1 <<>> www.briantakita.com +nostats +nocomments +nocmd
;; global options: +cmd
;www.briantakita.com.       IN  A
www.briantakita.com.  1800  IN  CNAME	btakita.github.io.
btakita.github.io.    2163  IN  CNAME	github.map.fastly.net.
github.map.fastly.net.  29  IN  A	199.27.77.133

What's this github.map.fastly.net? It looks like it related to github pages routing.

Anyways, it remained for a few minutes and then went away.

Some likely culprits are browser cache, some sort of propagation time in the Github platform, or something else entirely.

I don't think it was a browser cache because this was the first time I visited briantakita.com being routed to github pages. That leaves it being a propagation time issue or something else. While I believe it was propagation time, I'm not sure.

I also am just going to move on and leave it at that. Please comment if you run into the same issue or if you can confirm the issue.