Hosting my app: Heroku PLUS Netlify
I have deployed both a React.js and a Rails API to Heroku before. One of my grievances is that they both go to sleep. It makes sense for Heroku to have apps go to sleep for efficient use of its resources though. (Source: https://blog.heroku.com/app_sleeping_on_heroku ) But it is not fantastic for having people view my work. People can only wait so long before leaving.
Issue
Heroku was originally built for Ruby. Modern web development shifted to a backend API to handle requests from mobile apps and frontend apps.
With Heroku, a user would go to my single page application made with React and then wait for Heroku to wake up. When a user logs into the demo account, it would then wait for Heroku to wake up the backend.
That’s a lot of waiting and nobody has time for that.
Solution
Enter Netlify.
The frontend is static. So Netlify can host my single page application. (It’s basically like hosting with an AWS S3 bucket.)
When trying this frontend deployed on Netlify and backend deployed on Heroku, I also decided to add some code to show to the user that it is taking its time loading.
Here’s to people taking the time to check on your personal side projects!
