September 2020 Summaries

Crossroads, a US-based church, partnered with digital transformation agency Ample to overhaul their online presence and processes. The existing platform was complex, and introducing new tools or infrastructure would be challenging. Ample recognized the need for a phased approach to migrate from legacy infrastructure to a modern, lean stack with Netlify. This involved decoupling content management systems (CMS) from presentation layers, adopting a Jamstack architecture, and using micro frontends. The project aimed to improve agility, flexibility, and scalability across development teams. With Netlify's edge logic, redirects API, and proxying capabilities, Ample successfully migrated Crossroads' platforms without disrupting their existing infrastructure. The outcome was improved user experience, developer experience, and delivery scale, as well as reduced load on legacy infrastructure.

Introducing JamSnacks, a series of quick bites from community leaders building key technologies in the Jamstack ecosystem, available at Jamstack Conf Virtual on October 6-7. Join us to hear from speakers like Evan You, creator of Vue.js, Tom Preston-Werner, creator of RedwoodJS, and others, who will share the latest features and roadmaps across major Jamstack frameworks throughout the day. Register for free to join the event and participate in networking opportunities, live Q&A, trivia, and roundtables.

We discussed the Jamstack and its ecosystem, recognizing a significant amount of fear, uncertainty, and doubt surrounding it in the community. To clarify these misconceptions, we brought on Matt Biillmann, who helped coin the term and architecture, to share his journey and insights. We explored how the Jamstack differs from traditional monolithic architectures, highlighting features that may be misunderstood. Our goal is to provide a better understanding of the Jamstack and its benefits, helping to alleviate some of the doubt surrounding it.

To deploy a simple site using Postman and the Netlify API, you need a personal access token, a simple site to experiment with, and Postman. You log in to your Netlify account, get a personal access token, clone the repository, and review its contents. Then, you create a POST request to create a new site, followed by a POST request to create a deploy with the list of files that will be included. Next, you make PUT requests to upload each file individually, using the deploy ID from the previous step. Once all files have been received by Netlify, your deploy is complete, and the site dashboard shows that it has been deployed successfully. This process provides more control over the deploy process and can be used for building integrations or automating workflows that connect with other systems.

Celonis, a process mining software company, used Netlify Enterprise Solutions to supercharge their content production. They initially used WordPress but outgrew it as their success increased and customer base grew. Switching to a static site architecture using Netlify improved build speed, but there was still room for improvement. Celonis then switched their CMS from WordPress to Contentful and began using Netlify's High Performance Build, which significantly reduced build times. This enabled the company to scale their website production, democratize access to their CMS, and host a livestream for 18,000 attendees with just a few weeks' notice. By giving over 60 people at the company the ability to publish content with Netlify and Contentful, Celonis streamlined their content production process, increasing page count from 100 to 100+ pages per month. The new workflow also improved website performance, reducing load times by 82.3% and SEO rankings. Additionally, Celonis used Netlify's A/B split testing feature and deploy previews to optimize conversions and reduce the time spent on reviewing site changes. The company was able to host a successful virtual event for 18,000 attendees, showcasing the effectiveness of their new website architecture and processes built with Netlify Enterprise Solutions.

The Jammies` awards, debuting at Jamstack Conf on October 6th, aim to recognize innovative projects, new products, and community organizers pushing the Jamstack ecosystem forward. Nominations are now open until September 30th, with categories including Outstanding Community Organizer, Social Impact Award, Jamstack Web App of the Year, Disruptive Product or Service, and others. The awards ceremony will feature a live announcement by Phil Hawksworth, with prizes and plaques for winners. To attend, register for free at Jamstack Conf.

At Netlify, a distributed team's engineering operations have historically been opaque to leaders and team members themselves. The company has found that focusing on the right metrics and prioritizing the team over individual performance can motivate the entire team to consistently deliver great results. By using throughput, cycle time, and quality-based metrics, the team gains insights into productivity roadblocks and can identify areas for improvement. A weekly pulse survey provides a qualitative look at team motivation and management support. To implement effective metrics, it's essential to remember that what you measure has importance, and metrics should never be punitive. By focusing on collaboration and empowerment, metrics can become a powerful motivator for team performance.

Netlify.com undertook an ambitious project to improve their website's design and tech stack. They aimed to streamline development, maintain lightweight output, and use components for easier code reuse. After trying various component-based frameworks and build tools, they discovered that Eleventy's static site generator aligned with their goal of lightweight output. However, they found the existing Vue framework not as friendly in the component-based development space. To overcome this, they combined Eleventy with Vue using the @11ty/eleventy-plugin-vue plugin. They created a new project from scratch and demonstrated how to add a Doctype, manage CSS, and use components. The combination of Eleventy and Vue offers an innovative approach to building web pages, enabling partial hydration and progressive enhancement.

This incident highlights the challenges of deploying changes in a microservices-based infrastructure, particularly when dealing with high traffic and complex interactions between services. The upgrade to the database version introduced an unexpected variable that was not thoroughly validated, leading to a cascade effect across the cluster. To mitigate such incidents in the future, Netlify is implementing measures such as improved automatic canary analysis and anomaly detection, as well as evaluating ways to capture and replay large amounts of traffic for stress testing. The company is also working on isolating microservices and reducing their reliance on a single database, aiming to prevent similar cascade effects. Despite the incident, Netlify takes customer trust seriously and apologizes for the downtime, emphasizing its commitment to providing world-class service.

We have some new features heading your way to make your site maintenance a little easier! Disable form detection is now available, allowing you to increase deploy speed if forms are not being used. Clearer build statuses have also been introduced, providing more visibility into the build queue and process. Additionally, last build cycle usage visibility has been added, enabling users to track their build minute usage for better insights. These updates aim to improve site maintenance and deployment efficiency.

Jamstack Conf Virtual is a virtual event happening on October 6-7, 2020, focusing on the capabilities of the Jamstack architecture beyond static sites. The event features keynotes from big ideas about the web industry at large to deeper insights and stories from Jamstack users. Talks cover topics such as digital experiences and CRM, in search of Jamstack search, test automation strategies, Jamstack for the enterprise, Teespring's journey to Jamstack, and more. A virtual "hallway" track allows attendees to meet sponsors and other attendees, while workshops are available for purchase on October 7, covering topics like Jamstack 101 and beyond with Netlify, Getting Started with GatsbyJS, Building Modern APIs with GraphQL, and Better Build a Build Plugin.

There's often a moment when an old technology is about to be displaced by the next thing, where the main leader in the field goes out and makes a strong argument that nothing is happening. This phenomenon has occurred with technologies like the iPhone, Netflix, RedBox, and now, web architecture, as Matt Mullenweg acknowledges the Jamstack as "a regression for the vast majority of people adopting it". The shift away from monolithic web applications has led to a fragmentation of toolchains, making it challenging for developers to work together. However, companies like Netlify, Stackbit, Tina CMS, TakeShape, Hasura, One-Graph, and Apollo are working on improving the experience for marketers, content editors, and other stakeholders involved in building for the web. The Jamstack is undeniably here to stay, and its adoption will bring real benefits to the web in terms of performance, scalability, simplicity, end user experience, and security.

The New Target Static Mode in Nuxt.js allows developers to deploy their applications with static hosting, eliminating the need for dynamic route configuration and HTTP calls to APIs on client-side navigation. With this new mode, Nuxt takes care of creating routes automatically, preloading content, and reducing HTML size for optimal performance. This feature enables faster deployment and improved end-user experience.

The Remotely Interesting podcast team, consisting of Cassidy Williams, Divya Tagtachian, Jason Lengstorf, and Phil Hawksworth, discuss their blogging experiences and share tips for writing a blog post. They also mention authors and posts they enjoy reading, aiming to support and provide helpful content for listeners who write blogs. The episode is part of the Remotely Interesting podcast series that focuses on developer marketing and experience topics.

The virtual Headless Commerce Summit was held, featuring keynotes and live conversations about the future of e-commerce. The event focused on headless commerce, with discussions on its benefits, challenges, and best practices. Speakers shared their experiences and insights on implementing headless commerce solutions, including the luxury brand Paul Valentine's journey to a Jamstack approach. The summit also explored topics like performance optimization, A/B testing, personalization, and scaling e-commerce with Vue Storefront. Key takeaways from the event include the importance of better performance, visual presentation, and integration with existing solutions in e-commerce projects. The event aimed to educate attendees on how to make informed technical decisions when migrating to a headless architecture or embarking on a new project.

Remotely Interesting is a podcast by Netlify covering the Jamstack ecosystem, its surrounding technologies, and community news.` The team discusses the naming change from JAMstack to Jamstack, future trends in static-first web development, and various frameworks. They aim to engage with listeners through email and social media channels like the Netlify Community.