Collecting Brave Rewards on GitHub Pages

I'm a big fan of Brave Rewards, a system I think will revolutionize how content is monetized on the web, bringing privacy and independence to a system that's currently dominated by a couple of big players.

If you've never heard of it, read my take on Brave Rewards.

Publishing on GitHub Pages

I'm a web developer so publishing to my own blog is a time-honored tradition. But there are many tools available that often make publishing so easy and headache-free, it's often more convenient to use them. Other times it might even be in the best interest of your visitors to provide a URL other than a personal domain.

A good example is GitHub Pages, which let you create a static website for any repository hosted on GitHub. The hosting is free, reliable, and provides near instant updates. The URL structure is dictated by the repository name as follows:

# Pattern:
https://github.com/USER/REPO-SLUG/
https://USER.github.io/REPO-SLUG/

# Real example:
https://github.com/rupl/unfold/
https://rupl.github.io/unfold/

This simple convention allows anyone to find a GitHub Pages site if they know the repository URL (and it indeed exists). The most common use-case is providing docs and demos for open-source software.

However, there are other uses. People use GitHub Pages as a blogging service, and in my case I often develop and publish slide decks on GitHub Pages to accompany presentations at conferences. Since the slide decks get considerably more traffic than my personal blog, I thought I'd try to register the domain for Brave Rewards.

Verify your content on GitHub Pages

Brave supports two methods of verification. One is based on DNS, but in this case the individual users don't control DNS, only GitHub can do that. We need to use the other method: uploading a file to prove we own the subdomain.

Step 1: Register with Brave Creators

Register your subdomain by following the instructions at the Brave Creators portal. In this case you'll want to register YOU.github.io as the domain, where YOU is your GitHub username.

They will guide you through some account setup, then give you the choice of either DNS or file upload verification. We're using the file upload method.

Step 2: Create root GitHub Pages site

GitHub allows people who create a repo with the name USER.github.io to control the root of their GitHub Pages space. It's static website hosting, so you can place files in any directory you want.

Create a repo called YOU.github.io. When I created mine, I also added an index file so casual visitors will have something to look at. If you've previously created the repository, then just continue to the next step.

Step 3: Add Brave Rewards verification file

Add a directory called .well-known — including the dot at the beginning — to the top-level of the repository. In the directory, put the file you received from Brave Creators portal. It will only contain a few lines of text. Here is an example, but do NOT copy this text, you MUST use the unique file Brave provides you:

This is a Brave Rewards publisher verification file.

Domain: YOU.github.io
Token: 0123456789abcdef0123456789abcdef0123456789abcdef0123456789abcdef

Make sure the file is named brave-rewards-verification.txt

Step 4: Bypass Jekyll

This step is optional, depending on your setup. In my case, I wanted bare-bones output so I added a .nojekyll file to bypass Jekyll on GitHub Pages.

If you use your repository as an actual blog, you probably want to continue using Jekyll, and will instead need to add .well-known to your _config.yml as an included directory. See docs for Jekyll config.

Step 5: wait for verification

Hopefully after a day or two, you'll see the verified publisher icon next to your site in the Brave interface. Congrats! You're helping create a more sustainable web by opting out of third-party advertising in favor of direct, private micro-payments for your content.

Example repo

If you'd like to see a real example, look at my repository for rupl.github.io.