GitHub Custom Domains for RS_c Subdomain

If you want your recommender-systems.com subdomain, please do the following.

  1. Browse to the repository on GitHub where your website is hosted, i.e. https://github.com/<your_user_or_organization>/<your_repository/>,
    e.g. https://github.com/ISG-Siegen/Recommender-Systems.com
  2. Choose “Settings”
  3. Choose “Pages” in the left menu
  4. Under “Custom Domain” you see some name mentioned like <your_user_or_organization>.github.io. Please send us an email with exactly that github.io name (or a screenshot) along with your preferred name for a recommender-systems.com subdomain.
  5. Wait 🙂

Once you sent us the details above, we can set up the DNS forwarding. After we set up the DNS forwarding in our system, we will inform you. Then, you must wait at least 24 hours (48 hours to be on the very safe side). Then, you can continue as follows

  1. Go back to GitHub’s Custom Domain page
  2. Enter your complete subdomain without http or www into the text field, just enter <your_project>.recommender-systems.com
  3. Click “Save”
  4. Wait a few seconds while GitHub checks the DNS settings
  5. GitHub might or might not display some warning that the DNS is not configured correctly. However, you can safely ignore that warning if it looks like the following:
  6. Finally, activate the “Enforce HTTPS” option (this should also then remove the yellow warning box)
  7. That’s it!

Now, you should test your new sub-domain. Ideally, you should use a browser that you haven’t used in the recent few days to browse your website. Some browsers save SSL certificates and hence may not work for another one or two days until the certificates are updated around the world.

Important: Please note that once you set up the custom domain in GitHub, GitHub will forward visitors of your old GitHub URL to your new custom domain. If the custom domain is broken, e.g. because the DNS is not updated correctly, your website will be down. In such a case, please take screenshots of the problems, remove your custom domain from GitHub and let us know.

If experience any other problems, let us know, too. The setup on GitHub is a bit buggy sometimes. The easiest way of fixing a problem is actually to remove the custom domain from GitHub and add it again a few minutes later.