So… Github Pages has a problem, Github itself doesn’t release new versions very often and as time has gone on the system has fallen behind with Jekyll and the other dependencies. Pull requests and issues for version upgrades have been left open and unanswered for years leaving one to assume that Github itself doesn’t prioritize improving the underlying deployment gem / mechanism. That said though, pages is “free” for all Github users and organizations and they explicitly state that it’s not meant to be used for commercial purposes like running an e-commerce platform. If anything the only thing that Github gains from Pages is helping users become more familiar with their platform and a decent amount of goodwill from small-time developers.

Github Pages has been around since 2012 so its probably hard to justify putting a lot of additional effort into as it currently fulfills its purpose as far as Github is concerned. Jekyll lovers who want a more advanced blog / platform can even move their pages code to any of the platforms that support Jekyll as there isn’t really any lock-in other than old versions. I hope that Github gets around to better handling the dependencies but that seems unlikely given the current circumstances. I don’t think things are bad enough to warrant warning people to not start a new Pages site but it’s getting there.

If Github Pages ends up not working out in the medium term I think I will move to GitLab Pages as it is nearly the same offering and would be a good opportunity to finally play around with GitLab a bit. I don’t think there’s any other free platforms around though obviously a paid platform would have other benefits like more incentive to be kept up to date. Time will tell.

Thanks for reading this series. This is the last one but if you missed any of the previous ones, they can found here.