Website Setup Record

Since I acquired a .tech domain through the GitHub Student Developer Pack, and considering I had already built a personal blog using Astro + GitHub Pages, I decided to move my blog under this custom domain. Hence, this post.

Astro + GitHub Pages Deployment

I used an Astro template, cloned it, and deployed it. It wasn’t very difficult—I only needed to tweak a few components.

DNS Configuration

I originally claimed the domain via get.tech and intended to deploy directly using GitHub without relying on any intermediary services. However, no matter how many times I configured the A records and CNAME, DNS verification consistently failed, which became quite frustrating. Eventually, I switched to Vercel for deployment and updated the domain’s nameservers to Vercel’s. That did the trick. I deployed the site on a subdomain (third-level domain), with the root domain (second-level domain) set to redirect directly to it.

Reflections

I have to admit, this was my first time dealing with DNS configurations—things like A records, AAAA records, CNAMEs, and so on. It was honestly pretty difficult. Asking AI didn’t lead to a clear solution, and my setup only got worse as I kept tweaking it. Fortunately, the AI later suggested using a third-party deployment service. Although I wasn’t thrilled about relying on a third-party platform at first, I ended up using one anyway, and it turned out to be very successful and much more convenient. Even though the domain is only free for one year, I think I’ll likely want to renew it when the time comes.