I am the Product Manager for GitHub Pages. As has been mentioned multiple times here, the usage limits were not in response to a specific external event. The limits have been an internal policy (in one form or another) for as long as I've been involved (nearly 4 years now), and we chose to publicize them in a series of updates beginning early this summer.
This is a classic case of "this is why we can't have nice things". If you're using GitHub Pages for your personal site or to document/talk about the work you're doing on GitHub, in general, you should be fine, even if you get HN-level traffic every once in a while.
The problem comes when a small handful of users use GitHub Pages for things like automated version checks or configuration distribution, as a makeshift ad CDN for for-profit sites, pushing an automated build every minute, or to distribute large assets (for which things like Releases are a better fit).
When a user (ab)uses GitHub Pages in a way that threatens our ability to build or serve other users' sites, technically or practically, we need to step in, and those posted limits are intended to help set expectations as to what you should and shouldn't use GitHub Pages for. But again, the vast majority of the nearly 1M users that use GitHub Pages will never hear from us (and in most cases when they did, we proactively reached out and provided ample warning/offered to help).
> Additionally, GitHub Pages sites must refrain from:
> Pornographic content
How strict is this rule?
There has been some interesting open source AI projects related to NSFW images (eg. Yahoo_NSFW, Open_NSFW, MilesDeep). What is GitHub's policy regarding this projects? Could a GitHub page present results? What about a link to download a training dataset?
I also just noticed that Open_NSFW's web page is hosted on GitLab (https://open_nsfw.gitlab.io/). Would a page like this (which might be considered pornographic, depending on your interpretation) be allowed on GitHub pages?
See the section on "Sexually obscene content" in the GitHub Community Guidelines (https://help.github.com/articles/github-community-guidelines...). We purposely chose the word "obscene" and not "explicit" to allow for explicit but educational, scientific, or artistic content like this.
Clever, but respectful. I did not expect this response, but thinking about it again in context of the company it is coming from, I can see why you chose that response.
Thank you. Seriously. GitHub Pages is a great service. It's saved me in a whole number of smaller projects. The Usage Limits are surprisingly liberal considering it's a complimentary service! So, thank you and your team!
CloudFlare supports HTTPS for GitHub Pages, would definitely recommend it as although Namecheap is pretty good CloudFlare make everything DNS, CDN and security related soo easy for $0. (I'm not affiliated with them in any way :P )
The route from the user's browser to Cloudflare is encrypted (https), but the route between Cloudflare's servers and github pages is only http as Github does not support https for custom domains.
User <---https---> Cloudflare <---http---> Github pages
As long as your github page has https (it does) Cloudflare can do full HTTPS all the way through, and even strict to require a valid ssl cert (which github has).
Any tips on how to configure this? I'm pretty sure my setup has the problem that ploggingdev talked about.
I acknoledged the issue given, but considered it better that the content the user is accessing was hidden for their privacy - the link between Cloudflare and GitHub is backbone-of the internet stuff and has a whole different set of risks. Would be nice to plug it.
This is a classic case of "this is why we can't have nice things". If you're using GitHub Pages for your personal site or to document/talk about the work you're doing on GitHub, in general, you should be fine, even if you get HN-level traffic every once in a while.
The problem comes when a small handful of users use GitHub Pages for things like automated version checks or configuration distribution, as a makeshift ad CDN for for-profit sites, pushing an automated build every minute, or to distribute large assets (for which things like Releases are a better fit).
When a user (ab)uses GitHub Pages in a way that threatens our ability to build or serve other users' sites, technically or practically, we need to step in, and those posted limits are intended to help set expectations as to what you should and shouldn't use GitHub Pages for. But again, the vast majority of the nearly 1M users that use GitHub Pages will never hear from us (and in most cases when they did, we proactively reached out and provided ample warning/offered to help).