How to set up custom domain for Github Pages using minimal-mistakes

First you need to purchase a domain name from a seller. A domain name without the prefix like ivanhjc.net is called the root or apex domain, and a domain like www.ivanhjc.net or blog.ivanhjc.net is called a sub-domain. To use the root domain as the custom domain for Github Pages, you need to create an A record from your domain provider’s admin panel like this:

Name	Type	TTL	Data
@	A	1h	185.199.108.153
			185.199.109.153
			185.199.110.153
			185.199.111.153

To use a subdomain create a CNAME record like this:

Name	Type	TTL	Data
notes	CNAME	1h	ivanhjc.github.io

Once the custom domain is properly configured, go to the project settings on Github, and then input the domain in the Custom Domain area.

For more details see:

• Github help: About custom domains and GitHub Pages
• Google help: Domain forwarding
• Google help: About resource records

In the case of using minimal-mistakes you need to mind these properties: url, baseurl, and repository. As stated in Site base URL when hosting your website on Github Pages you need to specify baseurl: <project> to correspond to the URL format Github project sites use, i.e. https://<username>.github.io/<project>/, and when testing on local it runs on http://localhost:4000/<project>/. Since you have a custom domain you can omit baseurl. But if you’re testing some features that require production environment such as repository, comments, analytics, etc. by running the following command:

bundle exec "JEKYLL_ENV=production jekyll serve"

omitting baseurl would cause the path of assets to be wrongly parsed and the site would be a mess though it can be served. This is a bit confusing since the doc doesn’t address this problem but with several trials you could find that the path of assets is resolved with the repository value to something like this:

pages/<repository>/assets/...

Because without repository you can’t run in production mode it seems to be a dead end for this sort of configuration, i.e., you can’t run without baseurl as well. However, you can remove baseurl andrepository and run in development mode on local, and when pushed to Github everything will work fine, including features that require production environment, such as comments.