Register a domain with Amazon Route 53 via CLI is very straightforward, the only complicate thing is to generate the acceptable JSON structure, then somehow enter the JSON string in the command line without meddling from the shell.

The command is:

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$ aws route53domains register-domain

The documentation can be found from the AWS CLI Command Reference or issuing:

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$ aws route53domains register-domain help

Most the command line options require simple string values, but some options like --admin-contact requires a structure data, which is complex to enter in the command line. The easiest way is to forget all other options and use --cli-input-json to get everything in JSON.

First let’s generate the skeleton or template to use:

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$ aws route53domains register-domain --generate-cli-skeleton

That should output something like:

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{
    "DomainName": "",
    "IdnLangCode": "",
    "DurationInYears": 0,
    "AutoRenew": true,
    "AdminContact": {
        "FirstName": "",
        "LastName": "",
        "ContactType": "",
        "OrganizationName": "",
        "AddressLine1": "",
        "AddressLine2": "",
        "City": "",
        "State": "",
        "CountryCode": "",
        "ZipCode": "",
        "PhoneNumber": "",
        "Email": "",
        "Fax": "",
        "ExtraParams": [
            {
                "Name": "",
                "Value": ""
            }
        ]
    },
    "RegistrantContact": {
        "FirstName": "",
        "LastName": "",
        "ContactType": "",
        "OrganizationName": "",
        "AddressLine1": "",
        "AddressLine2": "",
        "City": "",
        "State": "",
        "CountryCode": "",
        "ZipCode": "",
        "PhoneNumber": "",
        "Email": "",
        "Fax": "",
        "ExtraParams": [
            {
                "Name": "",
                "Value": ""
            }
        ]
    },
    "TechContact": {
        "FirstName": "",
        "LastName": "",
        "ContactType": "",
        "OrganizationName": "",
        "AddressLine1": "",
        "AddressLine2": "",
        "City": "",
        "State": "",
        "CountryCode": "",
        "ZipCode": "",
        "PhoneNumber": "",
        "Email": "",
        "Fax": "",
        "ExtraParams": [
            {
                "Name": "",
                "Value": ""
            }
        ]
    },
    "PrivacyProtectAdminContact": true,
    "PrivacyProtectRegistrantContact": true,
    "PrivacyProtectTechContact": true
}

Fill in the fields, leave out the ones not needed:

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{
    "DomainName": "example.com",
    "DurationInYears": 1,
    "AutoRenew": true,
    "AdminContact": {
        "FirstName": "Joe",
        "LastName": "Doe",
        "ContactType": "PERSON",
        "AddressLine1": "101 Main St",
        "City": "New York",
        "State": "NY",
        "CountryCode": "US",
        "ZipCode": "10001",
        "PhoneNumber": "+1.8888888888",
        "Email": "[email protected]"
    },
    "RegistrantContact": {
        "FirstName": "Joe",
        "LastName": "Doe",
        "ContactType": "PERSON",
        "AddressLine1": "101 Main St",
        "City": "New York",
        "State": "NY",
        "CountryCode": "US",
        "ZipCode": "10001",
        "PhoneNumber": "+1.8888888888",
        "Email": "[email protected]"
    },
    "TechContact": {
        "FirstName": "Joe",
        "LastName": "Doe",
        "ContactType": "PERSON",
        "AddressLine1": "101 Main St",
        "City": "New York",
        "State": "NY",
        "CountryCode": "US",
        "ZipCode": "10001",
        "PhoneNumber": "+1.8888888888",
        "Email": "[email protected]"
    },
    "PrivacyProtectAdminContact": true,
    "PrivacyProtectRegistrantContact": true,
    "PrivacyProtectTechContact": true
}

Now let’s register by running through jq to clean up extra blanks and end of line characters, and then pipe to xargs command by using new line character as the delimiter instead of a blank by default:

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$ cat input.json | jq -cM . | \
  xargs -d '\n' aws route53domains register-domain --cli-input-json
{
    "OperationId": "00000000-0000-0000-0000-00000000000"
}

Recently, I have received a warning email from GitHub:

GitHub Pages recently underwent some improvements (https://github.com/blog/1715-faster-more-awesome-github-pages) to make your site faster and more awesome, but we’ve noticed that realguess.net isn’t properly configured to take advantage of these new features. While your site will continue to work just fine, updating your domain’s configuration offers some additional speed and performance benefits. Instructions on updating your site’s IP address can be found at https://help.github.com/articles/setting-up-a-custom-domain-with-github-pages#step-2-configure-dns-records, and of course, you can always get in touch with a human at [email protected]. For the more technical minded folks who want to skip the help docs: your site’s DNS records are pointed to a deprecated IP address.

What are the improvements on GitHub Pages? Here are the two major improvements [1]:

• Pages are served via CDN (Content Delivery Network)
• DoS (Denial of Service) protection

But my site wasn’t properly configured to take advantage of speed and performance due to that the “DNS records are pointed to a deprecated IP address”.

What are the IP addresses that GitHub Pages uses before but have been deprecated now?

The domain realguess.net is an custom zone apex domain (also called bare, naked, or root domain). The domain blog.realguess.net is not a zone apex domain, but a subdomain. “A custom subdomain will not be affected by changes in the underlying IP addresses of GitHub’s servers.” [2] But, I am not using a subdomain. I have configured the zone apex domain to point to currently deprecated IP addresses. “If you are using an A record that points to 207.97.227.245 or 204.232.175.78, you will need to update your DNS settings, as we no longer serve Pages directly from those servers.” [3] So, these IP addresses are deprecated, and need to update the current DNS from:

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$ dig realguess.net +nostats +nocomments +nocmd
;realguess.net.                 IN      A
realguess.net.          86400   IN      A       204.232.175.78

to the new ones pointed by username.github.io:

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$ dig realguess.github.io +nostats +nocomments +nocmd
;realguess.github.io.           IN      A
realguess.github.io.    3600    IN      CNAME   github.map.fastly.net.
github.map.fastly.net.  28      IN      A       199.27.73.133

And the new IP address are:

192.30.252.153
192.30.252.154

Using a subdomain is a better solution, so I don’t need to care about the changing GitHub Pages IP addresses in the future. But I don’t think the frequency of IP address updating is going to be very often. So, I will stick with my zone apex domain.

1. Faster, More Awesome GitHub Pages
2. Setting up a custom domain with GitHub Pages
3. My custom domain isn’t working