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Netlify

This document records best practices for deploying static sites to Netlify, DataMade's preferred static hosting provider.

Contents

Background: What is a static site?

Although the term evades strict definition, for DataMade's purposes, "static sites" are defined as sites that don't require any backend functionality, meaning that all business logic and data storage can be performed in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript on the client side. At DataMade, we prefer building static sites using Gatsby; for help getting started with building a Gatsby app, see our Gatsby documentation. and come back here when you're ready to deploy your app.

Deploy a static site to Netlify

The following instructions will help you set up a static site deployment with Netlify. We use Business Cat for this purpose. Business Cat is a machine user that allows us to build and/or install dependencies from private GitHub repositories. Using a machine account, rather than a personal account, guards against deployment failures if someone leaves DataMade or is otherwise removed from a private repository.

Create a Netlify site and publish the first build

  1. Log into the Netlify console at https://app.netlify.com using the DataMade Netlify account. (The credentials can be found in the shared DataMade LastPass under Netlify.) We currently use a shared account because we don't have access to Netlify Teams.
  2. In the console, choose New site from Git to configure your app.
  3. Select the GitHub provider. Netlify will ask you to authenticate with GitHub. Get credentials for Business Cat, add it as a collaborator to the repo you want to integrate, authenticate with Netlify, and choose the repo from the dropdown menu.
  4. For the Branch to deploy option, select deploy. If you don't have a deploy branch yet, create one off of main so that you can verify the Netlify deployment.
  5. For the Build command option, input whatever command you use to generate a build of the site (e.g. yarn build).
  6. For the Publish directory option, input the directory that houses your built assets. For Gatsby sites, this directory is typically called public/.
  7. Select Deploy site and view your deployed site at the link Netlify provides.

If your deployment was successful, Netlify will automatically deploy your site when changes are made to the deploy branch.

Set up a custom domain

  1. Navigate back to https://app.netlify.com and select your site from the list of DataMade sites.
  2. Navigate to Settings > Site information.
  3. Select Change site name and change it to match the URL for the site (e.g. datamade.us).
  4. On the Settings page, navigate to Domain management using the sidebar.
  5. Select Add domain alias and type in the URL for the site (e.g. datamade.us).
  6. Netlify will display a modal providing instructions on how to update your DNS records to point to the Netlify deployment. Send these instructions to Derek or Forest so that they can follow the instructions in the domain registrar.
  7. In the options menu next to the domain name on the Domain management console in Netlify (...), select Set as primary domain.
  8. In a minute or two, visit your domain to verify that it's pointing to Netlify and has provisioned an appropriate SSL cert.

Add a netlify.toml config file to the repo

Once you've deployed your site in the Netlify console, you can keep your deployment configuration under version control by defining a netlify.toml config file in the root of your project repo.

For an example of a simple netlify.toml file, see the DataMade website repo. For full reference, see the Netlify docs.

This step isn't required for your deployment to work, but it's considered a best practice to keep configurations under version control whenever possible.

Set up Slack notifications

See our documentation for setting up Slack notifications for your Netlify builds.