September 2022 Summaries

Netlify has improved build times across all plans, with up to 40% faster builds available on paid plans. The company has optimized its infrastructure and cache handling, adding more processor cores and memory resources for developers on paid plans. This change allows for a higher level of performance, including a High-Performance Build solution with a 99.9% uptime SLA for Enterprise plans. With these improvements, Netlify's Starter plan now includes 4 processor cores and 8GB of memory, offering more flexibility in the future.

Netlify has launched its Integrations Hub, allowing developers to quickly discover and connect 150+ integrations with their web applications. The hub provides a centralized resource for developers to leverage their favorite tools with Netlify, streamlining workflows and improving site performance and time-to-market. With the integration of popular tools such as Contentful, Cloudinary, Datadog, and Algolia, developers can find the right tools for every project, reducing complexity and increasing productivity. The hub is designed to connect developer tooling across the entire workflow, providing an intuitive experience for users, with features like automatic recognition of web frameworks and simplified installation processes. By partnering with best-in-breed companies, Netlify aims to empower developers to embrace modern web development while prioritizing investment in the benefits partners bring to mutual customers.

Netlify is introducing automatic deploy cleanup and new deploy retention policies starting late October 2022, aiming to reduce manual effort for security-conscious teams and improve the platform's sustainability by deleting old deploys automatically when they're older than 90 days. This policy won't impact production sites or underlying source code hosted by Git providers, ensuring that only non-critical deploys are deleted. Customers on Business and Enterprise plans can customize their retention policy to suit their needs, choosing from options ranging from 1 day to 365 days. The new policy will start batch-deleting old deploys no sooner than October 25, 2022, without disrupting production sites or impacting source code. Netlify aims to reduce the lift for security-conscious teams and improve the platform's sustainability by implementing this automatic cleanup process.

Netlify has identified a vulnerability in its IPX package that was discovered by one of its security researchers, but it has since remediated the issue with the help of the upstream community and there is no action needed from users to resolve the problem.

Netlify is committed to transparency and responsible disclosure of vulnerabilities in the packages used by its community. The company's security team will fix and disclose vulnerabilities in a timely manner, with a focus on improving not only itself but also the broader web. Netlify collaborates with bug bounty researchers and has a public program for reporting vulnerability findings, aiming to make the web a safer place through transparent disclosures. Customers can expect prompt notification within 48 hours if a critical or high CVE rating is identified, allowing them to take necessary action to secure their applications.

Netlify has upgraded the Agency Partner Program to provide more benefits and a tiered structure for digital agencies. The program aims to strengthen relationships with agencies and promote meaningful collaboration across teams. It offers resources such as access to web development best practices, marketing support, and exclusive opportunities at Netlify events. The program also increases access to the Jamstack and headless web development opportunities, and its success is demonstrated by the continued growth of agency partners who have automated their builds and deployments on the platform. The program connects agencies to the growing Jamstack ecosystem and partners with Netlify and beyond.

Netlify has introduced a new feature that allows users to mark their favorite sites, making it easier to organize and quickly access the most important ones. This feature can be accessed from the Site overview page, Sites list table view, or Team Overview page, and will pin favorite sites to the top of the list in the order they were last updated. The new capability is a result of user feedback and aims to improve site management on Netlify.

Netlify has introduced the ability to password-protect all site contexts on Pro plans and beyond, allowing customers to restrict visitor access on non-production site deploys with a simple password. This feature provides more options for password-protecting branch deploys and Deploy Previews, including validating releases with private deploys, protecting staging branches, and securing work-in-progress Pull Requests. With this new option, users can share upcoming releases with their team before the rest of the world has access to them, while keeping sensitive information private. Additionally, Netlify is planning to introduce more site protection options in the future.

Maistra, a leading tourist company in Croatia, migrated their slow and monolithic PHP application to a new site built on a stack of Netlify, Hugo, Cloudinary, and Vue JS. The result was a 25% faster site with improved Google speed test scores, despite having high numbers of images and videos. This was achieved through the use of best-of-breed microservices such as Algolia for search, Azure B2C for authentication, and VueJS for their JavaScript framework. The new architecture enabled developers to select tools that fit each service, allowing them to integrate legacy technology alongside new ones via a composable architecture. Netlify's CI/CD tools also played a crucial role in enabling a noOps approach to development, with unlimited identical code environments created easily through branches and informing Netlify to build and server these additional branches.

Blind Veterans UK`, a charity organization providing support to vision-impaired veterans, recently partnered with `Reason Digital` to replace their website with a high-performance site optimized for accessibility and security. The new site was built using the Jamstack architecture, which provides flexibility and power through decoupling design from content creation. Key technologies used include `11ty` for rendering pages and `Netlify` for hosting and deployment. The site achieved significant improvements in performance, with a Lighthouse score of 99/100 for accessibility and improved Core Web Vitals scores, including a 10x faster Largest Contentful Paint. Security was also enhanced through the use of security headers and SSL encryption provided by `Netlify`. The platform's flexibility allowed for rapid deployment and control over every byte sent to users, without compromising the CMS layout editor's power. Overall, the new site provides a better user experience while maintaining the charity's ability to deliver new features quickly.