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Introduction

Many research groups, student groups and projects need a website to disseminate their work. It’s common to use content manage tools such as wordpress for this purpose, but those systems require maintenance and a server.

Note:

This solution of redirecting a colorado.edu domain name to github pages is not avaialble to private websites, student websites or websites not affilitated with an official function of the University of Colorado. OIT has final discretion over approval of forwarding such pages.

An alternative: GitHub static pages

An alternative is to use github pages. You can follow the directions there to create your web pages. Github provides free “static web pages” hosting, meaning you don’t need to provision your down server.

Faculty and student group website can be hosted using github pages and then use a custom subdomain in the colorado.edu domain space. Examples include:

Alternatively, many research labs purchase their own domain. An example is http://www.cairo-lab.com/ – in that case, you should skip this writeup and go to the GitHub pages documentation directly.

Steps to redirecting a colorado.edu domain name to github pages

Follow these steps:

  • Insure that your web page relates to university functions and broadly follows university branding standards.

  • Choose a domain name that is not in use. You can use the dig or nslookup tool for this pupose.

  • Once your site is visible at e.g. http://YOUR-GITHUB-USERNAME.github.io, send mail to help@colorado.edu asking create a CNAME record that points your subdomain to your default pages domain. For example, if you plan to use the subdomain xyzzy.colorado.com, ask them to configure a CNAME record to point xyzzy.colorado.com to YOUR-GITHUB-USERNAME.github.io. You should include the link to the github pages directions on how to do this and communicate your role in the university and the purpose of the website.