Github question from a noob!

[StephBertha]

Hi there,

I never used Github before, but my client came to me with this question:

“Can you create a separate site to where we can preview changes, view the site, but where Google won’t pick it up in search engines?”

Is this something I would use Github for?

[Shikkediel]

At the chance of going astray a bit, I would just use a robots.txt on a regular site for that. Or a htaccess file that only allows certain ips if it has to be stricter.

[Tom]

Github Pages only works for websites that don’t need any server-side scripting also Github Pages still get indexed as far as I know. Shikkediels suggestions is in my opinion the better solution.

[Shikkediel]

Beverleyh is right of course but if you want to spare those $10 a year, you could even create a subdomain on an existing host. Something like preview.mysite.com. But that depends a bit on your server access (I know NameCheap DNS will let you create like a hundred forwards).

[Senff]

I would suggest to put the site behind some password protection (on a separate subdomain). Search engines won’t get past that.

To answer the original question: Github is basically only where you store your code, not where you host your site. So no, you wouldn’t use Github for something like that.

[StephBertha]

Thank you so much! This really helps me understand the use of Github and how to get around this. Much appreciated :)

[Author]

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