Mastering GitHub Pages: A Beginner's Guide

by Sufyan bin Uzayr (Series Editor)

Why should you read Mastering GitHub A Beginner’s Guide ? Because this book offers you a concise guide so that you can quickly navigate the terrains of GitHub Pages sites in a fairly smooth manner. But why use GitHub Pages if it can only make static websites? Why should you go for static websites when you could get a dynamic one made for your organization? Again, why not?! Having a static website is a sure-shot strategy to save a lot of money, keep the website secure, and ensure built-in backups. In addition, you can serve it over HTTPS and make sure that it is fast and SEO-ready. Mastering GitHub Pages delves into static (and dynamic) websites as well as their advantages and disadvantages. Static websites tend to be incredibly fast since they have no processing time for databases and other stuff. Additionally, because you are committing a code base of static assets to a Git repository, the rolling back of changes is simply an issue involving reversion to a commit that was made previously. So backups are a mere git push away, and you are basically serving your entire website from a cache. This means that your server will never need to process a request again. This book helps you master the art of static site generation in no time. Furthermore, Mastering GitHub Pages also discusses in great length Jekyll, a popular static site generator. When working with Jekyll, all you do is give it liquid templates as well as Markdown content, and it is adept at combining them both into a static website. It requires no-on-the-fly processing, and your blog will display at a significantly faster speed. This workflow proves useful for GitHub Pages because they tend to support the Jekyll builds. As such, your blog posts can be contributed using pull requests, and all your content gets stored within version control. Non-developers could also contribute posts in Markdown. Mastering GitHub Pages is an immensely useful book that all developers can use for the creation of websites on the free GitHub Pages platform. So, go ahead, grab a copy of the book for a proper GitHub Pages primer! Learn more about our other Mastering titles

164 pages, Hardcover

Published April 7, 2022

Reviews

[David Fulmer · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can’t say that I can recommend this book which purports to be a beginners guide to GitHub Pages. First of all, it seems to meander around a bunch of different topics, some of which are relevant to GitHub Pages but many of which are not. There are lengthy sections on digressions such as the history of GitHub and its funding and the purpose of the Version Control System Git. Some of these tangents are interesting but they don’t relate to the topic of the book directly.

Another criticism I have is that it occasionally veers into really complex topics that may or may not concern GitHub Pages. It covers topics like MIME Types and Cookies at a level that I don’t think a beginner would be interested in.

It does walk you through setting up a GitHub account and has some rudimentary information about getting started with a GitHub Page but there is a lot of extraneous content and even when it is walking you through some installation instructions the book can be confusing and unfocused.

I think what is most disappointing is that if you read through this book and follow the instructions, you won’t really walk away with even a simple webpage hosted at GitHub Pages. There isn’t even a sort of simple ‘Hello world’ type of demonstration.

Overall, I think that if you want to get started with a GitHub page you are better off with the tutorials offered by GitHub or by some other technical writers who have created simple tutorials online. This book is a mixture of some basic information and some advanced information but it doesn’t really offer a way to get started that will leave you feeling confident in creating a GitHub Page.

[Daniel Guerrero · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is something wrong when a book title starts with "Mastering" and later adds "A Beginner's Guide"
Half of the book is dedicated to git introduction which you should already know this to move into github pages (or at least a much shorter introduction)
It explains details about things really not important like history, cookie tossing (a problem only if you created a page site ten years ago under the github.com domain which is no longer possible)
Jekyll which is a core component associated with Github Pages is only "explained" in 20 pages of 140, so 15% of the book for a core component, and wastes 7 pages (5%) on history of github including the acquisition by microsoft and the origin and name of the mascot; and 10 pages (7%) on a fixing not relevant issues (cookies).

Still have some good info on some common (and not so common errors)