clarify instructions to assign a custom domain - #232
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Thanks for the PR and helping to make the course content better!
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| 1. Wait for the newly created record to propagate. You can use `nslookup` or `dig` to verify that it is available. | ||
| 1. Wait for the newly created record to propagate. You can use `nslookup` or `dig` to verify that it is available. This may take up to half an hour. |
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I'm not sure where the 30 minutes figure comes from. If you are creating the record then it should happen within a couple minutes. If the record is being updated then it depends upon the TTL (time to live) set for the record. AWS by default sets this to 300 seconds (5 minutes). If you are seeing times longer than that then it could be your browser or other caching layer (BYU's proxy server) that is causing the delay. Either way when that clears is dependent on the cache.
I think it might be better to say something like:
Once dig shows the correct record your browser might still be caching old information. You can verify this by using a different browser or flushing your browser's cache.
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| If you are using Route 53 then you would open the Hosted zone for your domain name and add a `CNAME` record by pressing on the **Create record** button. Then provide `pizza` as the subdomain, change the **Record type** to `CNAME`, and put your GitHub URL as the record value. For the example values given above, this would look like the following: | ||
| If you are using Route 53 then you would open the Hosted zone for your domain name and add a `CNAME` record by pressing on the **Create record** button. Then provide `pizza` as the subdomain, change the **Record type** to `CNAME`, and put your GitHub URL as the record value. Make sure that you follow the format `byucsstudent.github.io` and do NOT include a path such as `/jwt-pizza` with your URL. Also, do not include `https://` at the beginning. For the example values given above, this would look like the following: |
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I completely appreciate that there is the opportunity to get confused by this step, but I'm not sure that adding a third repetition of the same information will resolve the issue. The example directly above and the image directly below clearly show that it is the hostnames that DNS manages not URLs. If those examples were skimmed over then probably a textual sentence will also be ignored.
Perhaps the more valuable thing is to encourage the student to review what DNS is and how it works. Maybe a link to the CS 260 topic on DNS?
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| 1. Check the box to `Enforce HTTPS`. | ||
| 1. Check the box to `Enforce HTTPS`. Initially, this box may say `Enforce HTTPS — Unavailable for your site because a certificate has not yet been issued for your domain`. If this is the case, just wait a bit and the box should become available. You may continue on with the other steps while you wait for this to happen. |
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This feels like a good addition. Maybe it could be more concise (students tend to skim rather than read long passages). Perhaps:
Check Enforce HTTPS. If it’s unavailable because your domain certificate hasn’t been issued, wait a few minutes and try again.
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Clarifications for the instructions to Deliverable 2:
My friend and I both independently included the
https://username.github.io/jwt-pizzaURL in our DNS records instead of justusername.github.io, which caused some confusion for us. It seems other students in the class also made this mistake. This PR clarifies that.I also spent some time wondering where I had gone wrong in my steps for the Custom Domain and Enforce HTTPS parts of GitHub pages, since those did not initially work with my URL. I did not realize that it can take up to half an hour for these to work. I also included that in this PR.