An @benbalter-centric history of GitHub Pages and Autoblog

A behind the scenes look at how GitHub Pages came about and how it works today

Transcript

1. ! An @benbalter-centric history 
 of GitHub Pages and Autoblog Ben Balter @benbalter government@github.com government.github.com
2. ! @benbalter WordPress core contributor GSoC WP Document Revisions
3. October 2008 - “Jekyll” Launches
4. October 2008 - Autoblog Launches
5. November 2008 - Conveyor Launches
6. November 2008 - Jekyll Launches
7. December 2008 - Pages Launches
8. December 2008 - Disable Jekyll
9. January 2009 - CNAMEs
10. April 2009 - Config Files
11. ! Fast forward to 2012…
13. ‣ In the past, building websites with features like consistent templates and lists of aggregated content meant setting up complex content management systems. These CMSs consisted of templating logic, application code, and content databases so they could assemble webpages each time they were requested by site visitors. They were complicated systems that depend on many separate applications working together, like a web server to route page requests to a PHP application that uses pre-defined page layout templates to format content that’s stored in a MySQL database. Serving a page request required at least three separate applications all working together — any one failing would bring down the system…
14. ‣ From open source frameworks like Drupal, Wordpress, and Expression Engine to multi-million dollar proprietary applications that the government and big corporations procure from companies that also build tanks and battle ships, these systems produce the same exact output: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files that web browsers know how to format into the webpages we see. Additional features like RSS or JSON API feeds are just new templates for the same content, and backend workflow modules like those for embedded media and handling email notifications are really separate systems that introduce complexity when integrated with the publishing system.
15. By October I was fed up • 130 outages over 6 months (24+ hours of downtime) • AWS, Nginx, microcache, APC, opcode, page, and object cache, Varnish, buzzwords++ • WTF is a weekend?!
16. !
17. !
18. Feb 2013 - I want moar!
19. March 2013 - The inside man
20. Pulling back the curtain
21. Every developer has an itch
22. April - down the rabbit hole
23. May - Jekyll 1.0
24. August - GitHub Pages Gem
25. October - A lightbulb
26. November - Gem-based plugins, Ruby
27. December - CDN
28. December - Tutorial
29. December - Build feedback
30. Feb 2014 - Metadata, mentions, emoji, and redirects
31. June - Docker
32. May - Docs
33. July 2014 - Jekyll 2.0
34. September - Pages Health Check
35. January - GitHub Help
36. GitHub Pages Architecture GitHub.com -> Pages Worker -> File Server File Server -> Front End Server -> CDN
40. ! Eight lessons learned hacking on GitHub Pages for six months http://git.io/vJ8uj
41. ! An @benbalter-centric history 
 of GitHub Pages and Autoblog Ben Balter @benbalter government@github.com government.github.com