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I have been mulling over switching from Netlify to Vercel for a while for my personal site too. Netlify has weird defaults for everything. It caches almost not

I have been mulling over switching from Netlify to Vercel for a while for my personal site too. Netlify has weird defaults for everything. It caches almost nothing by default. I had to create a Netlify headers file to tell them that actually yes I would like my CSS, JS, and fonts cached. Absolutely absurd I had to do that. Even for font files. Because as we all know, the font files change so often that we should never cache them /s All manner of dumb things like this. Really the only thing keeping me on Netlify is that it has for handling built in. That and fear of changing DNS settings (I use Google domains).

tannhaeuser 4y ago
> fear of changing DNS settings Is that really a thing, with HNers of all people? You just use your registrar's/nameserver operator's web tool to point your DNS name to a new IP. Transferring your DNS to a new registrar might be a bit more involved but is guaranteed to be also possible by domain market regulation. Or maybe it is a problem of cache invalidation and/or lack of control over exact timing of DNS switchover? Or, idk, possibly Google-owned TLDs like .dev require Google Domains as registrar? Or does Google Domains (or GoDaddy or other big registrar) make transferring your domain difficult in a dark pattern way? Doubt it though, if even changing pointed to IPs appears difficult, which however shouldn't be something a registrar would have an interest in making difficult.
- echelon 4y ago
  > Is that really a thing, with HNers of all people? You want it to be hitless. Unfortunately DNS can take days to fully propagate and you may not see mistakes until it's too late to fix them. This can cause horrifying outages. HNers should be respectful of DNS changes and plan accordingly.
  - lloydatkinson 4y ago
    Indeed, not sure what the anger in their comment was for.
  - zakki 4y ago
    You can change your DNS TTL to let say 5 minutes before you move to new IP. You can change it 3 days before the movement(?).
    - scott_w 4y ago
      A story from 10 years ago providing services to the education sector: I did exactly what you suggested, even leaving extra time (a full weekend!) for the DNS changes to propagate. What happened? Turns out local authorities don't all respect DNS TTL settings and we had a major outage. I had to on-the-fly learn how to configure iptables to act as a proxy for the new server. The "proxy" was still receiving requests 2 weeks later.
    - chillfox 4y ago
      Fewer and fewer places actually respect DNS TTL.
  - neurostimulant 4y ago
    I always setup a reverse proxy on the old server that tunnel all TCP traffics on port 80 and 443 to the new server whenever I migrated a website for this reason. Some network really take their time updating their DNS cache, even if your domain has low TTL.
- lloydatkinson 4y ago
  Given that Netlify has very specific and unusual steps to setup in the first place, yes, it is a concern.
echelon 4y ago
> It caches almost nothing by default. Now I have to go check and see if it's not caching our fonts. Geez, I just assumed... > fear of changing DNS settings I recently had to migrate DNS to Cloudflare to stop a 40,000 QPS DDoS attack. DNS migration was slow, but painless. As long as you plan accordingly and set up the new destination in advance, it should be fine. Hosting DNS at a DNS provider will give you extra flexibility in the future.
- lloydatkinson 4y ago
  Yeah, it's absurd. Every page load the fonts were sent again. I use google domains for dns too, just with netlify as the host.
oefrha 4y ago
Careful now, if you use Netlify’s _headers to do caching the obvious way, every time you push a new build, some of your users may get a broken site that can only be unfucked by clearing cache. I happened to have written about this problem a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35508640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35508640
- tough 4y ago
  OK so move to vercel and just dont use Netlify fam
cpursley 4y ago
Render.com is a great replacement for both Netlify and Heroku. Check it out, static sites are even free.

tannhaeuser 4y ago

> fear of changing DNS settings Is that really a thing, with HNers of all people? You just use your registrar's/nameserver operator's web tool to point your DNS name to a new IP. Transferring your DNS to a new registrar might be a bit more involved but is guaranteed to be also possible by domain market regulation. Or maybe it is a problem of cache invalidation and/or lack of control over exact timing of DNS switchover? Or, idk, possibly Google-owned TLDs like .dev require Google Domains as registrar? Or does Google Domains (or GoDaddy or other big registrar) make transferring your domain difficult in a dark pattern way? Doubt it though, if even changing pointed to IPs appears difficult, which however shouldn't be something a registrar would have an interest in making difficult.

echelon 4y ago
> Is that really a thing, with HNers of all people? You want it to be hitless. Unfortunately DNS can take days to fully propagate and you may not see mistakes until it's too late to fix them. This can cause horrifying outages. HNers should be respectful of DNS changes and plan accordingly.
- lloydatkinson 4y ago
  Indeed, not sure what the anger in their comment was for.
- zakki 4y ago
  You can change your DNS TTL to let say 5 minutes before you move to new IP. You can change it 3 days before the movement(?).
  - scott_w 4y ago
    A story from 10 years ago providing services to the education sector: I did exactly what you suggested, even leaving extra time (a full weekend!) for the DNS changes to propagate. What happened? Turns out local authorities don't all respect DNS TTL settings and we had a major outage. I had to on-the-fly learn how to configure iptables to act as a proxy for the new server. The "proxy" was still receiving requests 2 weeks later.
  - chillfox 4y ago
    Fewer and fewer places actually respect DNS TTL.
- neurostimulant 4y ago
  I always setup a reverse proxy on the old server that tunnel all TCP traffics on port 80 and 443 to the new server whenever I migrated a website for this reason. Some network really take their time updating their DNS cache, even if your domain has low TTL.
lloydatkinson 4y ago
Given that Netlify has very specific and unusual steps to setup in the first place, yes, it is a concern.

echelon 4y ago

> It caches almost nothing by default. Now I have to go check and see if it's not caching our fonts. Geez, I just assumed... > fear of changing DNS settings I recently had to migrate DNS to Cloudflare to stop a 40,000 QPS DDoS attack. DNS migration was slow, but painless. As long as you plan accordingly and set up the new destination in advance, it should be fine. Hosting DNS at a DNS provider will give you extra flexibility in the future.

lloydatkinson 4y ago
Yeah, it's absurd. Every page load the fonts were sent again. I use google domains for dns too, just with netlify as the host.

oefrha 4y ago

Careful now, if you use Netlify’s _headers to do caching the obvious way, every time you push a new build, some of your users may get a broken site that can only be unfucked by clearing cache. I happened to have written about this problem a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35508640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35508640

tough 4y ago
OK so move to vercel and just dont use Netlify fam

cpursley 4y ago

Render.com is a great replacement for both Netlify and Heroku. Check it out, static sites are even free.