Netlify

A free tier that serves private repositories, a deploy preview for every pull request, and header configuration in a file you commit. The easiest start, and what the Quickstart uses.

Setting up

1. Sign in to Netlify with your GitHub account.

2. Add new project → Import an existing project, and pick your fork.

3. Set the build settings:

   Setting	Value
   Build command	npx engraft apply --template engraft.template.yml --values customization/my-museum/engraft.variables.yml && npm run build
   Publish directory	www

4. Deploy.

Every push to main now builds and deploys. Deploys on the project page can also trigger a deploy by hand.

Configuration in a file

The same settings can live in the repository, where they are reviewable and versioned. Settings in the file take precedence over the ones in the Netlify interface:

netlify.toml

[build]
  command = "npx engraft apply --template engraft.template.yml --values customization/my-museum/engraft.variables.yml && npm run build"
  publish = "www"

[build.environment]
  NODE_VERSION = "22"

Headers

netlify.toml also sets the caching headers:

netlify.toml

[[headers]]
  for = "/index.html"
  [headers.values]
    Cache-Control = "no-cache"

[[headers]]
  for = "/sw.js"
  [headers.values]
    Cache-Control = "no-cache"

[[headers]]
  for = "/data/data.json"
  [headers.values]
    Cache-Control = "no-cache"

[[headers]]
  for = "/build/*"
  [headers.values]
    Cache-Control = "public, max-age=31536000, immutable"

[[headers]]
  for = "/assets/*"
  [headers.values]
    Cache-Control = "public, max-age=86400"

index.html and sw.js must not be cached, or visitors keep an old build. /build/* file names are content-hashed and safe to cache forever.

No redirect rules needed

The app uses hash-based URLs, so there is no single-page-app fallback to configure. A /* /index.html 200 rule is not needed.

Deploy previews

Netlify builds every pull request at its own URL. For an audioguide this is genuinely useful: a content or branding change gets a link you can send to a colleague, and open on a phone, before it reaches visitors.

• Turn offline support off for previews. A service worker on a preview caches aggressively and shows reviewers stale content. A staging variant with offline_support: "false" does that.
• Point previews at staging content when you also change data.json.

Netlify's deploy contexts give previews a build command of their own.

Custom domain

Domain management → Add a domain. Then either:

• Point a CNAME at your Netlify address — guide.museum.org. CNAME my-museum-123.netlify.app. — which is what you want for a subdomain, or
• Move the whole domain's DNS to Netlify, which is convenient if Netlify hosts your main website too.

HTTPS is set up automatically once DNS resolves.

Private repositories

Netlify's free tier builds and serves private repositories. That matters if your fork carries anything you would rather not publish — unreleased content, an internal staging URL, an exhibition before it opens.

Free tier limits

Netlify's free plan limits bandwidth and build minutes per month; the current numbers are on their pricing page. A build of the app takes a couple of minutes, and the app itself is a few megabytes per visitor. The number to watch is bandwidth, and only if your media is on Netlify too.

Other hosts of the same kind

Vercel, Cloudflare Pages, Render and GitLab Pages work the same way: a build command and an output directory.

npx engraft apply --template engraft.template.yml --values customization/my-museum/engraft.variables.yml && npm run build

www