Hi, this drop-in replacement for Github Pages works great.

Looking at the source code, it looks like the pages are served directly by the Express framework in NodeJS; correct? I wonder how well this performs under load; any estimates/experiences? (we are considering hosting redecentralize.org on our own server, but are a little worried about e.g. a slashdot effect taking it down when it is needed most..)

The Express docs suggest running e.g. nginx as a cache in front of it, might that be a good idea? And if not, perhaps at least the app could use gzip compression?

(besides, using an nginx server might also be useful to e.g. obtain server logs for statistics, but that’s a separate question)

@girish Indeed, the pad had ‘freely’ permission; but that should mean freely editable only to people knowing the URL. By clicking a link in the pad, the pad’s URL was made available to the owner of the linked website.

It looks like Cloudron hides apps’ Referrer-Policy HTTP header (in this line), replacing it with the rather lax value “no-referrer-when-downgrade”, which can result in private URLs leaking to third parties.

Example case that led to this discovery: We run HedgeDoc (which adds a “same-origin” policy); and just this week we found that, without us having published our pad’s URL anywhere, somebody had edited the pad after finding the URL in their server logs.

I am not sure what the ideal solution would be. Perhaps you may want to add your referrer policy only if the application did not already specify one?

On GitHub Pages (the ‘real one’), if one forgets to set the url variable in jekyll’s configuration file, apparently it will automagically be set correctly.

Using Cloudron’s GitHub Pages app, the url seems to remain empty. Or, at least, the absolute_url filter in jekyll does nothing. (and setting the url variable in _config.yml fixed this for us)

@girish Thanks for the response!

For higher loads, I recommend fronting the site with something like cloudflare.

We might indeed try use such a CDN if it turns out to be needed (probably not cloudflare, to not centralise the web too much). Ideally people would all just get our site via peer-to-peer delivery instead.

@girish said in Performance:

@gerben BTW, is the site already on GitHub pages app?

No, currently our server runs a copy at web.redecentralize.org; from this speed test it looks like you’d have 1.66 second when visiting from San Francisco (to Amsterdam). Not as good as the 550ms I get for redecentralize.org (i.e. GitHub’s servers/CDN), but acceptable I guess. I see we could also trim some file sizes..

I also found https://redecentralize.org/interviews/ (fantastic!), this is going to keep me occupied for a while

Enjoy.

Hi, this drop-in replacement for Github Pages works great.

Looking at the source code, it looks like the pages are served directly by the Express framework in NodeJS; correct? I wonder how well this performs under load; any estimates/experiences? (we are considering hosting redecentralize.org on our own server, but are a little worried about e.g. a slashdot effect taking it down when it is needed most..)

The Express docs suggest running e.g. nginx as a cache in front of it, might that be a good idea? And if not, perhaps at least the app could use gzip compression?

(besides, using an nginx server might also be useful to e.g. obtain server logs for statistics, but that’s a separate question)