🚢 Deployment

For general deployment advice, see the Deployment page in Resources. This page specifically documents options available to Launch Pad projects.

Frontends

Netlify

Netlify is a service for continuously building and deploying web applications from a GitHub repository. It also includes nice features such as branch previews.

There are two options for deploying your project using Netlify:

• Create your own Netlify account to deploy from - this means you must use the provided netlify.app domain, or buy another domain to use.
• Deploy using the UBC Launch Pad Sponsored OSS account - this is a paid account that Netlify has sponsored us with. You must use this account if you wish to deploy your Netlify app on a ubclaunchpad.com domain - for example, ubclaunchpad.com, docs.ubclaunchpad.com, design.ubclaunchpad.com, and sync.ubclaunchpad.com are deployed using this account. To get set up, just reach out to #ask-leads once you have met the following requirements for using the sponsored account:
  • Made your project repository public (most teams will do this from the beginning anyway)
  • Add a liberal license like MIT or a Creative Commons license to your repository
  • Add some text linking to the Netlify website saying This project is powered by Netlify or similar. You can also use one of their badges.
  • Made sure your project is not a commercial project (most Launch Pad projects won't have this issue, but do keep this in mind)

We recommend using Netlify's file-based configuration to make your site configuration visible and easier to redeploy in the future if we move accounts - take a look at netlify.toml examples in Launch Pad for reference.

Backends

Inertia

Inertia is a UBC Launch Pad project designed to continuously build and deploy Docker-based projects from a GitHub repository to a cloud VPS instance. More details are available in Resources, the Inertia Usage Guide, or in the #ask-inertia channel on Slack.

ubclaunchpad/rocket2 currently uses Inertia for deployment to an AWS EC2 instance.

Heroku

Heroku is also a good option that UBC Launch Pad has used in the past. It is a cheap alternative to deploy simple applications. Heroku has a free option that is useful for demos or for applications that do not require to stay up all the time.

ubclaunchpad/sync uses Heroku to deploy its backend.

TIP

As a student, you have access to Github's student developer pack, which includes a free Heroku hobby dyno. The hobby dyno is a great deployment option for small scale applications, and unlike the free dyno, the application does not go to sleep.