GitHub is making HTTPS mandatory for all GitHub Pages websites starting June 15, 2016, according to an announcement from the company.
GitHub is the place most developers go to host their source code. There are alternatives, but GitHub is extremely good and has a lot of features.
If you're an open-source, in addition to hosting your code, GitHub also allows you to create presentation websites, called GitHub Pages.
These are static HTML websites created with the Ruby-based static site generator, Jakyll. The technology is simple and has been copied by many other projects.
Until now, GitHub Pages were delivered over HTTP by default, but GitHub users had the option to enable HTTPS if authors wanted, with a warning from the company's team.
“We were officially avoiding supporting [HTTPS for GitHub Pages] because the traffic from our CDN to our servers was not encrypted until now,” explains GitHub’s Ben Toews.
HTTPS support in the GitHub core service was added many years ago. With today's announcement, GitHub should support GitHub Pages over HTTPS, and now, almost all of the service's core features are available over encrypted communications.
Considering that some nation-states are quite interested in what their citizens program or host on GitHub, this move should be applauded.
Starting June 15th, all new username.github.io domains will use HTTPS, and all old ones should redirect to the HTTPS version automatically. GitHub Pages using custom domains will remain on HTTP.
