July 2020 Summaries

The Jamstack architecture is being increasingly adopted in e-commerce due to its benefits of improved site performance, reliability, and faster iteration. The Headless Commerce Summit will be held on September 3 to discuss best practices and plot the future of e-commerce using headless and Jamstack architectures. This virtual event aims to bring together top digital agencies, popular e-commerce brands, and technology vendors in the Headless Commerce ecosystem to share knowledge and expertise. The summit will cover topics such as headless systems, Jamstack web architecture, APIs, modern development workflows, and best practices for implementing a headless commerce solution on the Jamstack. It's an opportunity for web development leaders to learn about the benefits of using a Jamstack architecture and how it can improve their e-commerce sites.

Netlify is introducing a new feature that allows teams to prioritize their enqueued builds, enabling them to jump the queue and start building immediately when build capacity becomes available. This feature is now available to all team Collaborators and Owners on Business or Enterprise teams, providing visibility and control over build activity. The ability to jump the queue is also useful for managing urgent deployments and can be used in conjunction with other tools to monitor and manage web development teams and projects. Netlify's High-Performance Builds are another option for enterprise customers looking for faster builds and higher concurrency.

Jamstack Conf is going virtual again, taking place online on October 6-7 under the theme of "full service Jamstack." The event aims to showcase the capabilities of the Jamstack architecture in powering dynamic applications and personalization at the edge. It will feature a mix of community-generated speaking proposals and curated speakers, with early registration now open. The virtual conference is designed for engineers, web architects, technology leaders, and digital agencies who are embracing the next evolution of modern web development architecture.

Netlify has introduced simplified pricing plans for its services, making them more accessible and affordable. The Pro plan now starts at $19/month per team member, while a new Business plan begins at $99/month per team member. These changes are aimed at reducing the friction of getting started with Netlify and enabling teams to develop web sites and apps faster using Jamstack technology. The company has also added new features for its Business and Enterprise plans, including advanced team security, support for self-hosted GitHub Enterprise and GitLab, and unlimited access to Netlify Analytics.

Netlify now supports self-hosted instances of GitHub Enterprise and GitLab on Business and Enterprise plans, making it accessible to teams using these platforms. The integrations are supported in environments where the self-hosted implementation is not located behind a firewall, with future support for use cases planned. The intuitive UI-based setup allows users to easily link their sites to self-hosted repositories. This update brings the benefits of the Jamstack workflow and advanced platform features to enterprise-scale teams. Netlify's new Business plan offers access to these features for $99/member/month, with support for self-hosted GitHub and GitLab instances available in this plan as well as the customized Enterprise plan.

In this blog post, the author discusses how to add user reactions to Gatsby blog posts using a React UI component called react-svg-bubble-slider. The author explains that adding reactions removes the need for moderation and allows users to choose from a pre-approved set of reactions. They also explain how to get started with integrating react-svg-bubble-slider into a Gatsby project, including importing the component, configuring icons, getting current reaction, mapping over state values, and handling user interaction when buttons are clicked. The author provides an example code snippet that demonstrates this process, which includes storing count values in local state and updating them on button clicks. Finally, they mention using FaunaDB to store reaction counts in a real-world scenario.

The Fieldfusion SaaS company, a UK-based startup, leverages Netlify's developer-friendly workflows to build and deploy its field service management software. By utilizing Netlify's Edge network, caching, and modern Jamstack technologies like Vue.js, Hasura, and websockets, Fieldfusion significantly reduces development time, improves performance, and enables repeatable workflows. The company successfully launched a COVID-19 tracker in under 24 hours, which received significant attention and views. With Netlify, Fieldfusion aims to refine its formula for creating MVP offerings and focus on building robust products that are measurable and scalable.

The article guides users through adding login/logout functionality to a Next.js application using the Netlify Identity Widget. It starts by setting up a new project or using a starter project, enabling Netlify Identity, and installing the widget in the application code. The article then explains how to add authentication functionality, including initializing the widget, authenticating with OAuth providers, and handling login and logout events. The user can customize their experience by adding routing/redirects based on login state, custom hooks for widget functionality, styling the modal, and setting site locale. Once the project is deployed to Netlify, users can access their app's Identity Settings to add auth providers, limit registration, and customize emails sent to users.

Little Caesars, the third-largest pizza chain globally, has successfully implemented Gatsby as its website framework to improve customer experience and site security. The company's previous architecture was difficult for developers to manage and could create a disjointed user experience. By choosing Gatsby, which is built on React, Little Caesars could transition quickly with minimal learning curve for their developers. The adoption of Gatsby also simplified the website architecture, making it easier for developers to manage and delivering a more unified and faster experience for customers. Additionally, using Gatsby Themes allowed for easy updates across the company's 20+ global websites. The new site successfully handled the surge in orders following their Super Bowl ad without any issues.

Creating an Angular Jamstack blog using Scully, the Angular Static Site Generator, allows developers to easily build and deploy a pre-rendered blog with Markdown content. The process involves integrating Scully into an existing Angular application, generating a blog skeleton, creating content in Markdown, pre-rendering all content as it goes, deploying to the Netlify Edge CDN, and adding CSS styling to make the blog look visually appealing. With Scully's help, developers can create a site with a home page, list of all blog posts, and individual post pages, all deployed live on Netlify for easy sharing and continuous deployment.

Slice Machine is a workflow tool developed by Prismic that aims to improve component-based approach in website development. It's an open-source CLI and a component library designed to help developers build, deploy, and manage website sections more efficiently. The tool provides a visual interface for non-technical users to create pages by combining pre-built components, called Slices. Slice Machine also includes features like accessibility, responsiveness, and cross-browser compatibility in its default library of customizable components. The project is currently in the beta testing phase and encourages community involvement through open-source contributions and feedback.

You've successfully built a full-featured Jamstack app with subscription e-commerce in place, using Stripe and Netlify Identity. You've set up user authentication, role-based access control, and automatic subscription management, all coordinated between Stripe and Netlify Identity. Your app now includes protected content based on subscription level, allowing users to manage their subscriptions and access the corresponding content. To take this further, you can explore additional resources and tutorials on managing payments, donations, and other e-commerce workflows with Stripe in modern web apps.

Creating a fully-fledged Jamstack commerce store with Commerce.js and Netlify requires setting up a Chec account, deploying the application, and configuring the store. The application uses Next.js for server-side rendering, static generation, and client-side rendering, with Redux for state management. Pre-fetching data at build time allows for faster page loads and SEO benefits. The application handles cart and checkout functionalities on the client-side, with an order confirmation page and print-receipt functionality. Customization options include adding shipping zones, customizing styling, A/B testing, integrating backend tools, and more. With Commerce.js, businesses can create a unique shopping user experience while leveraging the Jamstack architecture's benefits of speed, security, and scalability.

Netlify and the Jamstack helped LiveChat, a SaaS-based communication tool provider, migrate away from WordPress and improve their website's performance, security, and scalability. By adopting Netlify's Edge Network and static-site architecture, LiveChat was able to deliver faster, safer, and more scalable websites, allowing their developers to focus on building user experiences rather than managing the platform. The company also saw improvements in uptime, with 99.99% reliability, and increased efficiency, thanks to deploy previews, automated builds, and instant rollbacks. With Netlify, LiveChat was able to streamline their workflow, build custom implementations, and provide a better experience for their customers.

Netlify Identity is a service that allows developers to add login and user permissions functionality to their web applications without requiring extensive coding knowledge. The service provides pre-rendered authentication solutions, including external OAuth providers such as GitHub, GitLab, Google, and Bitbucket. By integrating Netlify Identity into an Angular application created with the Angular CLI, Scully, and Netlify Edge, developers can easily add login functionality to their site. The service also enables role assignment for users, allowing administrators to manage user permissions and access levels. With Netlify Identity, developers can focus on building their applications without worrying about complicated authentication processes.

Netlify has officially released two-factor authentication as an opt-in feature to enhance the security of user accounts, providing an additional layer of protection against unauthorized access. Two-factor authentication requires users to provide a second piece of information, such as a code sent to their phone or a fingerprint scan, in addition to their username and password, making it more difficult for hackers to gain access to accounts. Users can enable two-factor authentication through the User Settings page on Netlify, with options including using popular authentication apps like Authy or Google Authenticator. Once enabled, users will need to save recovery codes in case they lose access to their two-factor authentication apps, providing an added layer of security to protect their account.

Netlify has partnered with Name.com to offer domain names in its all-in-one platform. This integration allows users to purchase domains and set up DNS automatically, including free SSL through Let's Encrypt. Understanding the Domain Name System (DNS) is crucial for harnessing online computing capabilities, as it translates human-readable domain names into IP addresses that computers can understand. Key components of DNS include top-level domains (TLDs), second-level domains (SLDs), nameservers, and DNS records, which serve different purposes such as pointing to hosting providers, mail servers, and text records for security and privacy. Netlify's integration with Name.com simplifies DNS setup and configuration, allowing users to take full control of their online presence without getting lost in the details.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for reliable data on the number of COVID-19 tests performed in the United States, as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) had stopped sharing this critical information. Robinson Meyer and Alexis Madrigal, along with Erin Kissane, formed The COVID Tracking Project to manually gather and compile testing data from each US state and territory's public health department website. They built a resilient site using Jamstack architecture, Contentful, Algolia, and Netlify, which has become an invaluable resource for citizens, journalists, and even state governments seeking accurate COVID-19 data. The project's success was marked by unprecedented traffic and API requests, with the site scaling to handle millions of unique users and powering over 2 million API requests daily from around the world.

Netlify has been successfully deployed by Democracy Works, a nonpartisan nonprofit that builds tools to improve the voting experience in American democracy. The organization's engineering team of 23 people previously struggled with custom website deploys, which were time and resource consuming. However, after discovering Netlify for one of its smaller projects, Ballot Scout, they deployed it for TurboVote, their online tool that sends election reminders to over 7 million people. With Netlify, Democracy Works can reliably host assets during traffic crunch times, test URLs ahead of time, and deploy frontend branches in flight. The integration with Netlify was smooth, the automation was nice, and working with the Netlify team was a pleasant experience. The deployment ensured that Democracy Works could handle big spikes in traffic and better serve its partners and users. Netlify also relieved some pressure on Democracy Works's backend technology by caching requests. Overall, Netlify has enabled Democracy Works to feel confident about handling huge spikes in traffic and take off a lot of their engineering plate.