Feedback: Developer starter kit for Netlify sites
Hi everyone, I'm looking to get a bit of feedback on an idea for developers.
I've built quite a few JAMstack sites on Netlify, and learned a lot doing it. I wanted to see if there is a market for those learnings, packaged up in a well-documented, starter kit.
Who is this for?
I'm thinking that this would benefit developers, web designers, or similar, that want to build and host personal projects that won't cost a monthly fee, or want to build sites for clients that won't need much maintenance.
It would essentially be a pretty much done for you starter-kit.
Benefits
- Hosting on Netlify is pretty much free.: This means there are no server costs, no time spent on server maintenance.
- Built-in continuous deployment: Netlify rebuilds your website once a change has been committed to your github/bitbucket/gitlab repo
- Use free data sources: I've recently built a restaurant site that uses a Google Sheet as the data source for the menus, so the owner can change it themselves. Once a change has been made on the sheet, Netlify gets triggered (via a URL) to rebuild the site.
- Free Admin UI: Netlify provides a free CMS option, that allows you to provide a UI to your end-client, so they can make edits, add blog posts, etc.
- Form Handling: Netlify also provides a way to handle form submissions, up to a certain amount free per month.
- Serverless AWS Built-in: Netlify Functions is a really useful feature of Netlify where you can have serverless functions setup and deployed by Netlify, but baked into your codebase. No separate management.
Unique Value
I've built a few of these sites, and while there are a ton of free resources that help you get started, they all required a lot of configuring to get somewhere useful.
Each use-case required a ton of configuration, manual testing,
The end-client is nearly always non-technical, so an admin UI is required. This requires configuration and checking.
I want to provide real-world tested setups that will allow other developers to bypass a lot of configuration and setup, and focus on shaping the look and feel of the site for their client, or themselves.
The goal will always be to add functionality using free, or nearly free, third-party options where possible.
Use Cases
Some sample use-cases that I plan on making available immediately, with others to follow:
- Personal Blog
- Restaurant Site
- Simple eCommerce Site
- Job Board Site
Any other suggestions?
The Offer
For a one-time fee, you get access to the source code, with all the configurations optimised for your use-case.
The tech-stack will be utilising either Eleventy for JS developers, or Jigsaw for Php developers
- Netlify configuration configured for your use-case (as per above)
- Vue functions for common requirements (responsive nav, full-page hero sections, modals, etc)
- Comprehensive documentation to allow you to easily make changes, with sample code
Feedback
Is this something you would be interested in? Or would you be happy to just spend time figuring out what to do based on freely available sources?
What would be the benefit you'd need to see before spending money on something like this?
🙏Any and all feedback appreciated.
