Why use Vercel#

• Baidu indexing

• Free

  Vercel is the easiest way to deploy websites. Host your web projects with zero configuration, automatic SSL, and global CDN.

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A similar product is netlify. It’s actually not bad either; the reason I don’t use it is that I can’t open its pages without a VPN. Actually, I originally used Github Pages, but I didn’t like the domain (xxx.github.io), and it can’t be crawled by Baidu, so I eventually gave up on it. Of course, you could also use Coding to split traffic for domestic (China) access, so Baidu can crawl your site, but that’s too much hassle. And Coding’s service isn’t very stable. (Coding was updated in 2021; I haven’t tried it, so I can’t comment.) Another option is gitee, which is quite good in every way, except that it doesn’t support custom domains.

1.Register on Vercel#

2. Import#

On the homepage click “Import Project”, then “Import Project From Git Repo”, and select GitHub. Authorize, then select the repository you created at the beginning to import.

Note: if you use my method of syncing the entire hexo folder to the cloud, you’ll see your project type is HEXO. If you used deploy, it will show as “other”.

Finally, you can visit a URL like xxxx.now.sh to access your blog (isn’t it much nicer than Github’s xxx.github.io?).

And if you sync the entire HEXO folder to github, you’ll find that

3. Get a domain#

Some people might ask: isn’t the now.sh domain that Vercel provides good enough? Why bother with your own domain? Of course you can, it’s just that the access speed is painfully slow. With your own domain, you can use Cloudflare for acceleration!

You can get a domain from wherever you like — for example, buy a Tencent Cloud domain, where an xyz domain costs only 1 yuan for the first year, and it even comes with domain email support.

Of course, if you want to get one for free, register a free domain at freenom, then change the NS service provider to Cloudflare.

(However, freenom domains apparently can’t be used to register Tencent’s enterprise email)

4. Register on Cloudflare#

As I said before, the access speed of now.sh in China is unbea(r)ra(b)ly(le) slow. Using Cloudflare can greatly improve access speed.

Register an account at cloudflare, then follow the step-by-step prompts to change the NS records (name server records) to the ones Cloudflare provides for you.

From then on, all DNS changes must be done on Cloudflare, otherwise they won’t take effect

5. Add a record pointing to Vercel#

Go to Vercel, find “view domains” in the project, and enter the domain you want to use (i.e. the prefix + ”.” + the domain you obtained earlier).

Then follow the prompts to add a CNAME record on Cloudflare.

Actually, I originally wanted to set a CNAME record, but CNAME records always cause some weird problems, so I had to use an A record instead.

No matter what, please make sure the proxy status is yellow (proxied)

No matter what, please make sure the proxy status is yellow (proxied)

No matter what, please make sure the proxy status is yellow (proxied)

6. Add a 404 page#

Create a now.json in the root directory with the following content:

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{
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  "version": 2,
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  "routes": [
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    { "handle": "filesystem" },
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    { "src": "/(.*)", "status": 404, "dest": "/404.html" }
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  ]
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}

Some pitfalls you may run into#