Netlify - The Complete Guide (FullStack Serverless)

File-based configuration

Continuous deployment works by connecting a Git repository to a Netlify site and keeping the two in sync.

Netlify will run your build command and deploy the result whenever you push to your Git repo.

If you thought deploying new projects to Netlify could not be more simple, you might have been right, but Netlify always like to surprise you.

You can customize and alter the redirect behavior by adding options to netlify.toml file or adding a new _redirect file.

If you've assigned an externally registered domain to your site,, you  can configure your external DNS provider to point your domain to Netlify.

Or else Netlify can manage your DNS for you without any hastle ;)

Netlify lets you link a GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket repository to a site for continuous deployment. Each time you push to your Git provider, Netlify runs a build with your tool of choice and deploys the result to Netlify's powerful CDN.

When a build is triggered on Netlify, their buildbot starts a Docker container running a build image.

You can even run this build bot on your local PC.

Netlify environment variables are accessible during your build. This allows you to change behaviors based on deploy parameters or to include information you don't want to save in your repository, such as API keys.

This video provides troubleshooting tips for failing builds in Netlify's build service.
Trouble shooting steps you can follow, or where you can get help. You are not alone here!

Run our entire platform right on your laptop.
Preview it all – site generation, functions, and edge logic.

With Netlify, simply set a folder and drop in your functions. Everything else is automatic.
You can run your AWS lambda functions here too.

You can write your serverless functions with typescript, using @types/node @types/aws-lambda.

If you can't wait your deployment to pick it up from the continuous integration.
In that case you can link a deployment in Netlify to your repo in local machine.
This can be smart when locally testing a site.

Netlify comes with built-in form handling. Netlify build bots do it by parsing your HTML files directly at deploy time, so there's no need for you to make an API call or include extra JavaScript on your site.

You can trigger serverless function calls when certain Netlify events happen, like when a deploy completes successfully. Or when a user submits a valid form.

All form submissions are filtered for spam using Akismet by default, an industry leader in spam detection.
For additional protection to help prevent abuse of your forms, you can add a honeypot field and/or a reCAPTCHA 2.

The post-processing bots that look for the netlify attributes when a site is deployed only know how to parse HTML. But in a React app, there is no real HTML files on the build time. So how Netlify bots can parse your HTML and identify Forms?

What if you want to submit the Form using JS? Or how you can stay on the same page, after submitting the form?

If you’re using a static site generator like Gatsby or React-Static, or tools like react-snapshot that generate a static snapshot of your site, the build tool will generate the static HTML form automatically for you.
But there is a caveat!

Netlify Identity service brings a full suite of authentication functionality, backed by the GoTrue API. This allows you to manage and authenticate users on your site or app, without requiring them to be users of Netlify or any other service. You can use this for gated content, site administration, and more.

In this plain HTML example we will not use any bundler. So we will not use the npm package. We will add Netlify Identity in the plain js way.

We will use the official npm package of the netlify identity widget. We will call it inside React hooks.

We discuss few important Identity settings here like, restricting self registrations. So that your users can register only if you invite them.

We all love Netlify Functions. A lot. But can u restrict their access only  to the authorized users?

What if you want to call a function whenever a new user sign up. What if you want to run a certain validation and block/allow the operation when a user is trying to sign up?

We explore here some of the paid features of Netlify. Setting up branded Oath screens, setting up ur own SMTP server and etc.

Netlify CMS is an open source content management system for your Git workflow that enables you to provide editors with a friendly UI and intuitive workflows. You can use it with any static site generator to create faster, more flexible web projects.

The quickest way to get started is with a template. This will clone the project to your git repo, will create a new deployment in netlify, enable Netlify Identity, create a admin user and disable self registration for the NetlifyCMS app.

config.yml file is the heart of NetlifyCMS. You can configure external services with this and you can enable different work flows for your CMS here.

By default, all entries created or edited in the Netlify CMS are committed directly into the main repository branch. Alternatively, you can enable an optional "Editorial Workflow" mode that allows for more control over the content publishing phases.

Widgets define the data type and interface for entry fields. Netlify CMS comes with several built-in widgets.

It’s not a very exciting feature and probably would not look as glorious on a road map. Yet, it would make my life with Netlify easier… :)

Better accuracy, better performance, and better privacy for your users. A one-click install with no scripts required on your websites.

• Pageviews & unique visitors

• Bandwidth used

• Top sources & pages

• Top resources not found

• GDPR compliant

• No performance loss

  
  

Traditionally, you needed to exclude any large files from Git so repositories.
Netlify Large Media reduces what’s tracked in Git into tiny text aliases, making your repo potentially thousands of times smaller.