Netlify for hosting

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Overview

Bolt doesn’t have built-in hosting for your projects. Instead, it connects to Netlify to provide one-click deployments and hosting.

Netlify provides:

• Hosting
• Automated deployment
• Domain registration
• Monitoring tools

Explore Netlify’s website and documentation for full details of Netlify’s features.

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Limitations

If you plan to use Netlify, you need to understand more about the platform, and the type of software it’s designed to host. Netlify can’t host your database, or a traditional backend.

• Read Bolt’s Supported technologies | Recommended stack and architecture
• What is Netlify?: Netlify’s own description of their purpose and features.
• Intro to Composable Architecture: this is a big topic, but it’s worth exploring, as it helps you understand what Netlify can and can’t support, and how to build for deployment to Netlify.

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Connect Netlify and deploy your project

You can connect your Bolt account to Netlify for quick deployments using Bolt’s built-in Netlify integration.

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Prerequisites

You need a Netlify account.

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Connect Bolt to Netlify

1. On the Bolt homepage, hover over the left-hand side of the page to open the menu.
2. Go to Settings > Applications.
3. Next to Netlify, click Connect.
4. Log in with your Netlify credentials. Follow the steps to authorize Bolt.

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Deploy your project

In your Bolt project, click Deploy.

To redeploy your project after making changes, click Deploy again.

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Disconnect Netlify

1. On the Bolt homepage, hover over the left-hand side of the page to open the menu.
2. Go to Settings > Applications.
3. Next to Netlify, click Disconnect.
4. In Netlify, remove Bolt from your authorized applications:
   1. Click your profile > User settings > OAuth.
   2. Under Authorized applications, click the menu for the Bolt entry.
   3. Click Revoke access.

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Manual deployment

You can deploy your project to Netlify without connecting your Bolt account.

1. Run the project build command (usually npm run build).
2. Click Download to download the project.
3. Follow Netlify’s Manual deploy instructions.

Netlify provide a video tutorial:

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New to hosting

If you’re completely new to deploying and hosting websites and web apps, here’s a brief introduction to key concepts. Note that this description is a simplified version of a complex topic. It assumes you’re building a fairly standard site.

IBM provide a more detailed but still introductory guide: What is web hosting?

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Users, browsers, and servers

When you build a website or application, you need a way to get it to users. For any website or web app, this means hosting the site on a server. The interaction with the site goes like this:

1. A user goes to your website in their browser.
2. The browser asks the server for the site.
3. The server sends the website pages to the browser.
4. The browser displays the site.

Depending on how complicated your site is, there may be multiple messages between the browser and server as the user interacts with the site.

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Key terms

• Web apps: interactive software applications that run in a browser. For example, Bolt itself is a web app.
• Deployment: the process of getting your code onto your server.
• Hosting: storing your project on a server and making it available to users.
• Interaction: anything the user does. This includes entering a URL to go to a site, as well as things like clicking buttons or submitting forms.
• Request: the browser sends a message to the server.
• Response: the server replies to the browser.