24 Mar 2023

Deployment time with Github Pages has ballooned up to 5-10mns - this is with 700+ pages & includes large folders like /media and /images.

See Hosting my static website(s) with Github Pages

Testing Netlify as potential replacement.

Potential benefits of using Netlify vs Github Pages

• faster deployment time
• better website perfomance / optimisation
• better image handling in combination with Imagekit ImageKit
• private repo support

Setup

From Netlify, you can add Github repos to fetch/deploy from.

This installs Netlify as a 3rd party app on Github:

Basic settings - only access rights:

Tests

from same repo as current Github Pages repo

I setup a test app fetching from same Github repo as Github Pages (ie in parallel, for side-by-side comparison):

vs same Github Pages deployments:

with lightweight test repo

Using a test repo with only HTML & index files (no images/media) - 40Mb - I get:

• 1mn11s deployment time on Github Pages
• 18s deployment time on Netlify

re-adding entire repo to lightweight test repo

side-by-side, from same push:

• 35s with Netlify
• 5mns55s with Github Pages

😳

next steps

Potential way to go would be:

• Netlify for core files (HTML, CSS, JS, index files)
• Images handled separately? Potentially ImageKit ImageKit

Benefit of Netlify would also mean:
- using a private repo, so hidden folders remain hidden
- using their image capabilities & CDN? (to explore)