Deploy previews with Netlifly

Collaborative {distill} website workflows

Note: This post was originally written by Shannon Pileggi and was copied here on April 04, 2021 - see the original post here for a potentially updated version.

TL; DR

If you are deploying your {distill} website through Netlifly, you can enable deploy previews to create temporary urls to preview a branch.

Background

My usual website workflow so far has been to draft posts in my master branch with draft: true in the yaml, and then when I am ready to publish switch to draft: false and commit to my main/master branch. Recently, I’ve been inspired to try alternative workflows:

I’m also a huge convert to the church of making PRs to yourself. Start with an R Markdown project like a simple slide deck or a bookdown book, then get into the habit of every change is a branch + PR. Low cost, but teaches you a lot! pic.twitter.com/Ee3tuoS4Ef

— Alison Presmanes Hill (@apreshill) February 20, 2021

I also collaborated with someone on a blog post for the first time, and I learned that you can send links to preview branches! 🎉 For both solo and collaborative posts, this is my new workflow.

I did a quick search for existing guides, and I found that Garrick Aden‑Buie has a comprehensive 2019 blog post titled A Blogdown New Post Workflow with Github and Netlify. Some of the steps are specific to {blogdown}, so here is my {distill} take on it.

Netlifly settings

First, make sure you have deploy previews enabled on Netlifly. Login to Netlifly, go to your site, and then:

➡️ Site settings

➡️ Build & deploy

➡️ Deploy contexts

➡️ Deploy previews

➡️ Select Any pull request against your production branch / branch deploy branches Netlify will generate a deploy preview with a unique URL for each built pull request.

Figure 1: Screenshot of Netlifly settings with Deploy previews set to “Any pull request…”.

Back in website development

1. Create a branch for your website repository. I am naming my branch netlifly-deploy-branch, and in the R console submit:

usethis::pr_init("netlifly-deploy-branch")

2. Create a post. In R console submit:

distill::create_post("Deploy previews with Netlifly")

3. Draft post; set draft: false in the yaml.

4. Knit post. Depending on what you are doing in your branch, you may also need to 🔨 Build Website.

5. Commit everything. In terminal submit:

git add .
git commit -m "draft netlifly post"

6. Push to GitHub. In R console submit:

usethis::pr_push()

7. In GitHub, click “Create pull request”.

8. Some automatic checks will run. Click on “Details” where it says “Deploy preview ready!”

Figure 2: Screenshot of checks run on GitHub pull request. Click on “Details” where it says “Deploy preview ready!” to open the preview url.

This opens up a window in my browser with the url https://deploy-preview-3--flamboyant-mccarthy-854a9b.netlify.app/. Send this link to a friend for review!

9. Edit draft, repeat steps 4-8.

10. When ready to publish, back in GitHub click on “Merge pull request”.

Added April 3, 2020:

• Maëlle Salmon recommends “Squash and merge” from the drop down menu to create a cleaner commit history.

• She also recommends deleting branches after merging and provided this link to Refined GitHub, a “browser extension that simplifies the GitHub interface and adds useful features.” 😄

I’m new to this workflow and this post was written quickly - edits and suggestions are welcome!

Acknowledgements

Thanks, Alison Hill!🤗

Also, thanks for the additional recommendations, Maëlle Salmon!