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Basically - once you have the toolchain for generating sites on your local environment, Netlify automates all of the toolchain in the cloud by just hitting 'git
by mbesto 8y ago
Basically - once you have the toolchain for generating sites on your local environment, Netlify automates all of the toolchain in the cloud by just hitting 'git push'. It then has ancillary services for more "functional" components that often static sites lack (functions, forms, etc).
It's one of my favorite platforms because of its simplicity.
- dmix 8y agoIt's basically Github.io but if you need a more serious operation on top of it. Such as a company marketing website, rather than a personal blog.
- mbesto 8y agoAFAIK Github.io does nothing for the build process...it just hosts static files, which means you need to build them somewhere first (locally first).
- mattkevan 8y agoIt does run builds if you’re using Jekyll, though you’re restricted to a narrow set of whitelisted plugins. There’s no such limitation with Netlify.
- beat 8y agoGithub.io can build jeckyll for you, iirc. Netlify does the same thing, with more features. One Netlify feature I like is that if you host a domain with them, you can deploy branches to subdomains via git naming. This is good way to set up dev/test/prod environments with very little hassle. Something I see in a lot of threads like this is "What's so special about that? I can do all that stuff myself while self-hosting!" Yeah, but should you? Setting all this stuff up is a bunch of schlep that has no productive value, and I'm quite happy to outsource it to someone who makes it easy and obvious.
- realityking 8y agoIt does have built-in support for Jekyll: https://help.github.com/en/articles/using-jekyll-as-a-static-site-generator-with-github-pages https://help.github.com/en/articles/using-jekyll-as-a-static...
- hbosch 8y agoI get this experience on my own VPS with Dokku, mostly. I thought Netlify’s big bonus is their CDN and pricing?
- fastbeef 8y agoHmm, you right. You could also build a Dropbox clone yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem.
- mbesto 8y agoYes, you could do all of that or just sign up for a Netlify account, create a site, add your shared key and hit "git push". SSL, CDN, etc. all included.
- tracker1 8y agoNot to degrade the mention... I've done a lot of the same with Dokku on DO before. There's plugins for Let's Encrypt and some other bids. CDN, haven't worried about it too much, have used Cloudflare in front of a few sites, ymmv though. Netlify is definitely on my todo/reading list... I just tore down my personal website and blog, with the intent of getting it running elsewhere. For my blog, I exported all the details into markdown files with front matter, but hadn't done anything to get it re-published anywhere. So, who knows. I have a genuine interest in exploring a lot of this, but motivation + time have been limiting factors for me.
- r2pgl 8y agoI had the same issue with motivation + time but I already had my site setup/building via hugo. One day I said enough and I looked into it. In about 10 minutes I had it all setup with ssl, my custom domain, etc.
- hbosch 8y agoLol I walked into that, I admit it. But Dropbox is something for laymen and casual consumers, it had a massive convenience quotient — Dokku and Netlify (and surge.sh and Heroku, etc) are for developers specifically, and git pushing to website generator is more or less the same experience with all of those services. There isn’t a gulf of difference between using Netlify and creating a Dokku droplet on DigitalOcean... Edit: comment below helped me too, CDN, SSL, pretty URLs. All good value with Netlify. Thanks.