New Website

It is important to understand that deploying a website, maintaining the website itself, and maintaining the content on the website are three fundamentally different challenges.

The instructions on this page cover the initial setup and require a level of technical competency which may not be readily available; this should not stop you! Please, reach out on discord if you need help.

Continued maintenance is primarily limited to Content Updates.

Prerequisite: DNS

Domain Name Systems (DNS) are like a phone book for the internet. They tell your computer/phone where to find a website. The number looks much different than a phone number, but works exactly the same.

There are two primary options available for your domain name:

  1. Use a subdomain of https://sober.page/:

    • Share your fork (if any) on discord and ask for help!

    • OR Create a Pull Request with a new CNAME

    • OR Open an Issue with a link to your website project

  2. Register your own domain using a “DNS Registrar”:

    • The best options out there have shut down

    • This project transitioned from Porkbun (better interface) to Epik (better support/features)

    • A good rule of thumb is to avoid any service that offers to build your website (i.e. BlueHost)

    You will need these addresses if hosting on Github:

    A     @     185.199.108.153
            185.199.109.153
            185.199.110.153
            185.199.111.153
AAAA  @     2606:50c0:8000::153
            2606:50c0:8001::153
            2606:50c0:8002::153
            2606:50c0:8003::153
CNAME www   <username|project>.github.io.

Initial Setup

This assumes you have a Domain Name (DNS) picked out and need to go from looking at a confusing repository to having a website published on the internet.

  1. Create an account and log in to Github

    • You can (optionally) create a “github organization,” which is functionally equivalent to a “team”. This is not required to share your fork and can be set up later.

  2. Make a copy of hugo-website, giving it a meaningful name and description

    github_start

    • Choose Fork if you would like us to watch aamod for you (easier).

    • Choose Use this template to create a copy without the link (safer).

      E.g. github_create

  3. Note: Actions are enabled by default, but these will fail until a valid configuration is created.

  4. Copy any example content (without example-) and update as appropriate:

    • example-config.yaml (live sample config)

      • Focus on baseURL, title, descrition, phone, copyright, and aasites.

    • example-prebuild.yaml (live sample prebuild)

      • Remove “example-” from the “meeting-data” and copy baseURL

      • Tweak “pdf-blurbs” to your liking

    • content/example-contact.md

      • Remove line: draft: true

      • Replace example content with your own

  5. Update static/CNAME with the domain name (DNS) that was chosen earlier.

  6. Create local meeting information in data/meetings.yaml

    • This can optionally be broken into one meeting per file (see Area 63 Meetings)

  7. After making chanegs, wait for a successful build and deploy of your website

  8. Open the Settings page of your repository then go to Pages and set Source to Branch[gh-pages]

  9. Verify DNS check in Settings>Pages passes before checking Enforce HTTPS

Interactive Maps

If you do not want display Google Maps on your site, then you can put a # in front of “mapapikey” (in your config.yaml), similar to the comment above it.

The cost of this service is cumulative (across all sites), so we cannot provide a generice key. However, anyone can register for an account and create an API Key.

Github will warn administrators about an API key being discovered in a repository. This key cannot be kept secret and instead needs to be kept secure using the following settings:

  • Application restrictions: *<your-domain>/* (e.g. area63aa.org/*)

  • API restrictions: Maps Embed API, Maps JavaScript API, Places API

Meeting Guide App

AAMod produces a JSON file that can be used by the Meeting Guide phone application.

This file will be available at: https://yourdomain.tld/meeting-times.json

Connecting your meeting information to this application requires filling out a connection form. Where it asks for Site Sharing Key, the web address of meeting-times.json should be provided.

Security Updates

Most website vulnerabilities involve user authentication and authorization. They attempt to find ways to act like an admin or bypass an admin check or convince someone to share their password. Truly static websites do not suffer these problems because there is no dynamic component to be exploited. You cannot exploit that which is not present! (user authentication, file uploads, page edits, etc.)

In other words … there is nothing for you to be concerned about. A security update for this project is currently inconceivable.