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Ok, I'm a web dev and I hate having to deal with web servers, configs, CI, etc. The idea sounds great, but I can't understand how this works from this post. Ca

Ok, I'm a web dev and I hate having to deal with web servers, configs, CI, etc. The idea sounds great, but I can't understand how this works from this post. Can someone explain how this works exactly? Are they basically offering a way to prebuild apps to static assets and host them on CDNs? How do server-side only things will happen then?

petercooper 8y ago
Think Heroku but just for deploying static assets. You can do something as simple as have a git repo of assets, push it, and you're up and running with SSL, etc, straight away. How do you get dynamic? Well, they support a build process so static sites or assets can be built at their end, if that's how you roll. But if you want fully dynamic sites, well, no, you can use their AWS Lambda-powered functions service to help build this out, but you won't be deploying something like a PHP or Rails app to Netlify :-) This limitation opens up a lot of other opportunities to simplify deployment, however.
- vorpalhex 8y ago
  And if your main dynamic features are things like handling forms or an occasional db call on the backend, this isn't a bad approach. It's cheaper and less maintenance generally for a lot of simple cases, but obviously won't apply to all cases equally well.
- virgil_disgr4ce 8y ago
  Databases are, in general, the next obvious question for a dynamic app on Netlify. Some solutions can use lambdas, but since a straight-up database is always going to be necessary for certain things, it makes me wonder if they'd roll out a paid database at some point... though that sort of conflicts with their "JAM" "no backend! well somebody else's backend maybe?" selling point
  - freebs 8y ago
    Firebase Cloud Firestore is so nice and they've been working on it for a long time, this would likely not be a good use of their time.
pjc50 8y ago
This looks a lot like github pages, but with some additional infrastructure? Where does the backend go?
- hamandcheese 8y ago
  The same place the backend goes when you use GitHub pages.
hamandcheese 8y ago
Their main offering is 0 config static hosting. They also added a CI service to build your frontend for you and then deploy it. Then they have myriad other value added features, one of which is cloud functions. You can use that for your server side requirements, or you can use your own server. It’s not what they do that’s special, it’s how easy/magical they make the process (as well as the very generous free tier).
kolanos 8y ago
> Are they basically offering a way to prebuild apps to static assets and host them on CDNs? Yes. Pretty much. They're a more dev friendly CloudFront. Supports deploying from a git repo out-of-the-box, where there's a separate service for this with CloudFront. More expensive than CloudFront, though. > How do server-side only things will happen then? This isn't the main problem they're solving. They expect that you'll have an API somewhere to talk to. But they do have a "functions" feature, which is based on AWS Lambda, so you could use that for things that would otherwise fall under server-side. They also have a simple "forms" feature for basic data collection.
unstuckdev 8y ago
It's basically the subset of AWS concerned with delivering web pages to browsers in a friendly package. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_delivery_network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_delivery_network You can keep a static site with something like Hugo in a git repo and have Netlify automatically build it and make it available on changes. You can also just toss an HTML and CSS file in (like I do on https://unstuckdev.com/ https://unstuckdev.com/) and their robots put it up. You can do more with it, and that's what costs money, but it takes a small but tedious hurdle out of putting some HTML on the web.
tiborsaas 8y ago
It's because most of it is marketing speak. I suppose they don't want to call it a better GitHub pages with awesome UX, but rather invent a new category term. In the tech sector if it sticks then it's pure gold. I've set up a landing page recently and it was flawless on Netlify. You provide a Git repo, connect it to their CI then give some build commands and they will handle the rest. They still host it on regular servers obviously, but you don't have to do anything to manage it. They have a DNS server which is also pretty neat.
mbesto 8y ago
I love this service because it takes away the local toolchain required to do static sites and does that build process online. If you're a ruby guy, you can do Jekyll and Middleman for example. So my toolchain (using middleman) for my company website is: 1. Make change locally 2. Push to Bitbucket 3. Netlify notices the change to the master branch 4. Netlify pulls it to it's container, builds it 5. Newly built files are put in a CDN and HTTPS...all for free One of my favorite services right now. EDIT: To give more context this is what I did before: 1. Did the build using middleman to create static assets 2. Uploaded those static assets via FTP to AWS S3
PKop 8y ago
Move these to either a client side database like firebase/firestore or to lambda / cloud functions.
abalone 8y ago
> How do server-side only things will happen then? By calling a service from JavaScript. What you're probably getting at is, how do I dynamically generate web pages? That's different. As a web developer you're probably used to generating the presentation tier on the server at least some of the time. You query a database and spit out some HTML. The so-called "static" approach here means: 1. Generate more stuff up front with build tools that you previously would do at request time. For example, why write server code to generate and cache a blog on every request when you can just build it whenever you write a new blog post? 2. In many cases this greatly narrows down the dynamic stuff that might need to happen. See if you can use JavaScript to fill in the rest. Instead of inserting that ad banner with server code, write a JavaScript function to fetch it from a service (like Lambda) and update the DOM. 3. You can be as dynamic as you want to be by expanding on what you do with JavaScript and services. This is sometimes called writing a single page app. It's maybe more complicated but on the plus side, it's how you write mobile apps and you may be able to share the same backend.
tschellenbach 8y ago
As far as I can tell it just automatically runs yarn build an does a copy to S3 whenever something happens in your GIT repo. Setting up a few scripts and S3/Cloudfront to do this on your own takes a bit of work. With Netlify you just press the button it seems.

petercooper 8y ago

Think Heroku but just for deploying static assets. You can do something as simple as have a git repo of assets, push it, and you're up and running with SSL, etc, straight away. How do you get dynamic? Well, they support a build process so static sites or assets can be built at their end, if that's how you roll. But if you want fully dynamic sites, well, no, you can use their AWS Lambda-powered functions service to help build this out, but you won't be deploying something like a PHP or Rails app to Netlify :-) This limitation opens up a lot of other opportunities to simplify deployment, however.

vorpalhex 8y ago
And if your main dynamic features are things like handling forms or an occasional db call on the backend, this isn't a bad approach. It's cheaper and less maintenance generally for a lot of simple cases, but obviously won't apply to all cases equally well.
virgil_disgr4ce 8y ago
Databases are, in general, the next obvious question for a dynamic app on Netlify. Some solutions can use lambdas, but since a straight-up database is always going to be necessary for certain things, it makes me wonder if they'd roll out a paid database at some point... though that sort of conflicts with their "JAM" "no backend! well somebody else's backend maybe?" selling point
- freebs 8y ago
  Firebase Cloud Firestore is so nice and they've been working on it for a long time, this would likely not be a good use of their time.

pjc50 8y ago

This looks a lot like github pages, but with some additional infrastructure? Where does the backend go?

hamandcheese 8y ago
The same place the backend goes when you use GitHub pages.

hamandcheese 8y ago

Their main offering is 0 config static hosting. They also added a CI service to build your frontend for you and then deploy it. Then they have myriad other value added features, one of which is cloud functions. You can use that for your server side requirements, or you can use your own server. It’s not what they do that’s special, it’s how easy/magical they make the process (as well as the very generous free tier).

kolanos 8y ago

> Are they basically offering a way to prebuild apps to static assets and host them on CDNs? Yes. Pretty much. They're a more dev friendly CloudFront. Supports deploying from a git repo out-of-the-box, where there's a separate service for this with CloudFront. More expensive than CloudFront, though. > How do server-side only things will happen then? This isn't the main problem they're solving. They expect that you'll have an API somewhere to talk to. But they do have a "functions" feature, which is based on AWS Lambda, so you could use that for things that would otherwise fall under server-side. They also have a simple "forms" feature for basic data collection.

unstuckdev 8y ago

It's basically the subset of AWS concerned with delivering web pages to browsers in a friendly package. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_delivery_network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_delivery_network You can keep a static site with something like Hugo in a git repo and have Netlify automatically build it and make it available on changes. You can also just toss an HTML and CSS file in (like I do on https://unstuckdev.com/ https://unstuckdev.com/) and their robots put it up. You can do more with it, and that's what costs money, but it takes a small but tedious hurdle out of putting some HTML on the web.

tiborsaas 8y ago

It's because most of it is marketing speak. I suppose they don't want to call it a better GitHub pages with awesome UX, but rather invent a new category term. In the tech sector if it sticks then it's pure gold. I've set up a landing page recently and it was flawless on Netlify. You provide a Git repo, connect it to their CI then give some build commands and they will handle the rest. They still host it on regular servers obviously, but you don't have to do anything to manage it. They have a DNS server which is also pretty neat.

mbesto 8y ago

I love this service because it takes away the local toolchain required to do static sites and does that build process online. If you're a ruby guy, you can do Jekyll and Middleman for example. So my toolchain (using middleman) for my company website is: 1. Make change locally 2. Push to Bitbucket 3. Netlify notices the change to the master branch 4. Netlify pulls it to it's container, builds it 5. Newly built files are put in a CDN and HTTPS...all for free One of my favorite services right now. EDIT: To give more context this is what I did before: 1. Did the build using middleman to create static assets 2. Uploaded those static assets via FTP to AWS S3

PKop 8y ago

Move these to either a client side database like firebase/firestore or to lambda / cloud functions.

abalone 8y ago

> How do server-side only things will happen then? By calling a service from JavaScript. What you're probably getting at is, how do I dynamically generate web pages? That's different. As a web developer you're probably used to generating the presentation tier on the server at least some of the time. You query a database and spit out some HTML. The so-called "static" approach here means: 1. Generate more stuff up front with build tools that you previously would do at request time. For example, why write server code to generate and cache a blog on every request when you can just build it whenever you write a new blog post? 2. In many cases this greatly narrows down the dynamic stuff that might need to happen. See if you can use JavaScript to fill in the rest. Instead of inserting that ad banner with server code, write a JavaScript function to fetch it from a service (like Lambda) and update the DOM. 3. You can be as dynamic as you want to be by expanding on what you do with JavaScript and services. This is sometimes called writing a single page app. It's maybe more complicated but on the plus side, it's how you write mobile apps and you may be able to share the same backend.

tschellenbach 8y ago

As far as I can tell it just automatically runs yarn build an does a copy to S3 whenever something happens in your GIT repo. Setting up a few scripts and S3/Cloudfront to do this on your own takes a bit of work. With Netlify you just press the button it seems.