Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Netlify Dev

netlify.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 237 posts

Re: Netlify Dev

#111

Post by genericone »

LeonM wrote: post #108
ricardobeat wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to 1997! This is how Geocities, Tripod etc worked back then (I think geocities.ws has FTP access too, for the complete experience). Amazing to see the web coming full circle even on this.

Heh, I'm old enough to remember that experience! But yeah, it's basically like that but with some more modern features like being able to do this from a browser (no filezilla required!) and better control over HTTP headers and such.

All of that could be done in Geocities as well =)

Re: Netlify Dev

#112

Post by mattkevan »

mbesto wrote: post #94
dmix wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'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.

AFAIK Github.io does nothing for the build process...it just hosts static files, which means you need to build them somewhere first (locally first).

It 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.

Re: Netlify Dev

#113

Post by beat »

mbesto wrote: post #94
dmix wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'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.

AFAIK Github.io does nothing for the build process...it just hosts static files, which means you need to build them somewhere first (locally first).

Github.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.

Re: Netlify Dev

#114

Post by jchanimal »

kall wrote: post #110
zenithm wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netlify has integration with FaunaDB for the database tier.

FaunaDB looks like a great product for a serverless/SPA type app but I don't see how they are integrated with netlify other than they fit together well?

FaunaDB support is built into Netlify Dev and was shown in the Netlify CEO’s keynote at the JAMstack conf. Netlify also has one-click deploy support for including FaunaDB with your applications. For instance this sample app can be deployed almost automatically: https://github.com/sw-yx/netlify-fauna-todo (Disclaimer, I work for Fauna and helped with the one-click deploy integration.)

Re: Netlify Dev

#115

Post by soneca »

syntaxing wrote: post #27

Netlify service is ridiculously awesome. I host my site there for free and had some cert errors [1]. I messaged support and they had it fixed in less than 48 hrs. I seriously recommend others to use them rather than using Medium for their own content. [1] www.powu3.com

I too had a problem while using the free plan and I too had an awesome and fast response from support that solved my problem!

Great company!

Re: Netlify Dev

#116

Post by tw20190409mhbcd »

shadowoflight wrote: post #109
ricardobeat wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to 1997! This is how Geocities, Tripod etc worked back then (I think geocities.ws has FTP access too, for the complete experience). Amazing to see the web coming full circle even on this.

I have seen those exact words to describe Netlify - it's like Geocities, but for the modern web. I have yet to try it out for myself, but I'm thinking I may use it to get a personal site up and running since I have a tendency to take the power of running my own site on my own VPS a bit too far by changing it up (and usually breaking it) frequently...

There's also Neocities as an acceptable replacement for Geocities. It's also free, unless you want to use your own domain, which requires a $5/mo "donation" to become a Neocities supporter and unlock that and a few other features.

Re: Netlify Dev

#117

Post by graemebenzie »

xyzzyz wrote: post #38
smithmayowa wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netlify does the whole static thing better, by being extremely focused on all things static, which makes setting up a static site on netlify way less stressful than on github and amazon, there is also the market knowledge factor, I mean github is known for hosting code repos and S3 is known for hosting files(videos and pictures), netlify meanwhile is known for static pages.

Can you point anything specific in which it is better, instead of vague things like them being more “focused”?

After logging into netlify drag and drop a folder and you have a new site. Or deploy with a git push. Setup netlify cms to push changes to the git repo. Setup a build command to run hugo etc on netlify. Push lamda functions. Setup rewrite rules in a config file. Mirror their setup locally with the new dev feature.

Re: Netlify Dev

#118

Post by seanwilson »

Touche wrote: post #31

Can anyone explain the elevator pitch of Netlify to me? I know it's become quite popular in the last couple of years and I can't figure out why. I don't doubt that it's good at what it does, but it seems to do the same thing as any number of services. For example, I see a lot of people talk about it for static sites. But you get free static sites through GitHub, nearly free static sites on Amazon S3. What does Netlif…

> But you get free static sites through GitHub, nearly free static sites on Amazon S3.

I've been really happy using Netlify (with Jekyll) for https://www.checkbot.io/ - I didn't have to think about server admin at all when I got traffic spikes from Hacker News and Product Hunt traffic, and development features make working on the website really straightforward.

Features I like:

- Git based deploys automatically when you make a commit

- Git based rollbacks if there's a problem with the latest commit

- non-master Git branches are automatically deployed for preview

- automatic CDN + HTTPS setup

- no servers to admin i.e. they deal with security, scaling and configuration for you

- they do instant cache invalidation of images/CSS/JS files for you so there's no stale files being served after deploys

- before deploying you can run complex build scripts on Netlify to generate files to be deployed e.g. any static site generator you want to use, run arbitrary NPM scripts, you can download data that to be rendered on to a page

- you can use Netlify CMS as a friendly web interface to edit blog posts, articles and FAQs. It's easy enough for non-technical people so it's possible to use for standard business websites that would normally require something more complex to admin like WordPress.

You can cobble together something like the above yourself but Netlify makes it simple and robust so you can get on with more important things.

People that say you can do something similar with e.g. a Digital Ocean droplet are missing the point and are for sure paying with their time. If you've worked in web dev for a while you've probably tried to automate many of the above features yourself but it's just never going to be as robust as a service that has a dedicated support team behind it.

Re: Netlify Dev

#119

Post by tobr »

genericone wrote: post #111
LeonM wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, I'm old enough to remember that experience! But yeah, it's basically like that but with some more modern features like being able to do this from a browser (no filezilla required!) and better control over HTTP headers and such.

All of that could be done in Geocities as well =)

Geocities was enormously popular for good reasons.

However, I don’t think it had the ability to preview a deploy or roll it back with 100% certainty that it will be exactly as was before, which is something you really need when deploying is (too) easy.

Re: Netlify Dev

#120

Post by module0000 »

hbosch wrote: post #50
mbesto wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I get this experience on my own VPS with Dokku, mostly. I thought Netlify’s big bonus is their CDN and pricing?

I get this experience using non-netlify-specific tools and processes already. I've also been doing this type of work professionally for 15+ years. If I was just starting out today, netlify would be a huge time saver, at the cost of a ton of knowledge you gain doing it yourself.

"But wait...there's more". If you're a new to development or operations, you might be tempted to use something like netlify. If your project has a high probability(>75%) of generating real income, then DEFINITELY use netlify. Anything that stands between you and deployment is costing you money. But... if your project is a hobby or non-serious-revenue-generating endeavor: please please please do it yourself. Learn apache syntax, learn nginx syntax, explore why `setenforce 0` is for hacky amateurs. You'll learn marketable skills, that will help you in your future career endeavors.

Netflify creates a skilled "user of netlify". Doing it yourself creates an "engineer". Which of those two would you rather be?

Post reply on HN