✨ Add support for deploy previews on PRs (e.g. w/Netlify) #197
Description
Short summary (added for sprints :))
If you are familiar with netflify - please consider helping us in adding a build via netlify that allows users to preview what our site looks like before it's published online. this is an activity that we could implement in a sprint.
Many thanks to @CAM-Gerlach for suggesting this - his original thoughts on this are below :)
I would suggest considering using a service like Netlify for automatic site previews on PRs. The free tier should be more than enough and it only takes a few simple steps to set up. We use that or something similar on all the sites I'm involved with; we even used it for the Python docs until we switched to RTD for previews. Once we started using it, it was so handy to have an instant, fully working preview on every PR (both for reviewers and especially contributors) that it feels like going back to the stone age without it, haha.
Originally posted by @CAM-Gerlach in #179 (comment)
@CAM-Gerlach i have thought about implementing that. i just haven't had time!! i did set it up for another website i'm working on. it was easy. i wasn't sure if the previews would be free forever if we update the site regularly?? maybe we can open an issue and discuss?
So, I've opened an issue :)
As for the limitations, Per Netlify's latest pricing info, the free plan offers 300 build minutes per month, which given at least on GitHub the Jekyll build only takes 15 seconds should be more than enough (even assuming 1 minute per build with overhead) so long as you/others don't go too crazy with constant pushes to PRs. That should be enough for at least 300 pushes, or 1 new PR per day with 10 pushes each over its lifetime. In practice, using Netlify for many sites with varying change frequencies I've never run into the limits.
Of course, they could always change that someday, but given the relatively minimal setup it could always be switched to something else.