Advantages to using GitHub Pages to generate static sites
GitHub Pages is ideally suited for the creation of small-to-medium informational sites, especially technical documentation and other how-to subjects.
- Nothing to install, and no files to store on your own machine. This guide shows you how to create your web pages interactively on the GitHub website. You can literally start a page on your work machine, update it using your phone on the bus, and finish it on your home machine
- It’s free* (for public sites)
- It’s based on Markdown (sometimes called markup) a simple approach to writing that emphasizes the text itself, with minimal attention to formatting. It transforms simple text files into beautiful websites. You write the text files using a simple, natural set of conventions similar to the way many people format email. But because it centers around text files, you can easily pick them up and move them to a different content management system if don’t like GitHub Pages
- You can use it as the source for other hosting services, such as Netlify
- GitHub Pages is built on top of Git and GitHub, a powerful version control combination. Version control lets you roll back to earlier versions of a page (or the whole site) if you make a mistake somewhere
- Because it’s based on GitHub, GitHub Pages automatically has a bug/feature reporting system called Issues that’s available to every publication you create. Collaboration is built into every GitHub pages you create with no exta effort from you
- GitHub offers a clear, easy-to-read preview of Markdown pages That means even if you don’t use GitHub Pages for the final output, you can quickly see a rough idea of the finished page and make edits to it instantly, with automatic version control
- Because of the GitHub integration it’s ideal for teams
- It’s web-based, so you can start a page at home, then pick it up later a work without having to install any software or copy files manually
- It’s ideally suited for simple read-only blogs where absolute control over formatting isn’t as important as getting information across
* GitHub can almost certainly handle your needs, but isn’t designed for exceptionally popular commercial sites