So switched to Netlify (https://www.netlify.com) which took about 15 minutes to setup for Jekylll, custom domain and SSL. Was a relief to be in control again.
I was using a very simple deploy script that just ran the aws command line tool, and then made a simple curl request to invalidate the cache in CloudFlare. I've seen Netlify mentioned a lot, and I was about to say that I don't really need it...
But I just signed up, and I was immediately convinced to switch over. Their sign up flow is amazing. It really is like a Heroku for static content.
The main thing is that I don't have to run my deploy script anymore, and I just `git push`. I could set up the same flow with GitLab CI, but this is just a much nicer service, and it's free. And they do cache invalidation automatically. I don't know how their CDN compares to CloudFlare or CloudFront, but I'm sure it's good enough.
P.S. Another thing to mention is that I'm actually generating a static site from my Rails app. So far I really like using Rails helper methods and libraries to generate my static landing page, such as the recaptcha and stripe gems. I'm using "stripe-rails" to define all my plans with a DSL in config/stripe/plans.rb, and then that automatically generates my pricing page HTML. Then I just run `wget --recursive` to download the root page and all of the links.
I have my root domain record pointing to a CDN where I host the static files, and then the sign up or sign in links point to the Rails site running on a subdomain, e.g. app.domain.com. I really love this setup, because no matter how much traffic your site gets, the landing page will never go down.
BTW on our Middleman Netlify app, the assets generated are served up by a Cloudfront domain, so I'm assuming that's what they are using. You can inspect the page: https://monograph.io/
https://wordpress.com/pricing/
Same thing here.
Either it's a scam, or it's meant to be used for far more than a Jekyll blog. So the parent's suggestion that "if you're frustrated with Github Pages, use this super expensive and overengineered service instead" comes off to me like the worst kind of advertising.
They're not even in the same league. Netlify is designed for something far more than Github Pages.
I use Hugo for my static sites:
- https://scripter.co - https://ox-hugo.netlify.com - https://ox-hugo.netlify.com/test (yes, that's a different Hugo site than above)
The result is a lightning fast static site with dynamic content that is easy for a non-developer to use!