Deploying a Preact/Vite Application

Tutorial 4 of 5

Introduction

In this tutorial, our goal is to deploy a Preact/Vite application. You will learn how to prepare your application for production, build it and transfer the output to a server. By the end of this tutorial, you should be able to deploy your own Preact/Vite applications.

Prerequisites

  1. Basic knowledge of JavaScript and Preact.
  2. A development environment with Node.js and npm installed.
  3. An already created Preact/Vite application.

Step-by-Step Guide

Preparing Application for Production

Before deploying your application, you need to ensure it's optimized for production. This generally involves minifying your code, optimizing images, and other tasks to reduce the application's size and improve load times.

Building the Application

Use the following command in your terminal to build your application:

npm run build

This command will create an optimized version of your application in a new dist directory in your project root.

Transferring Build Output to a Server

Once you've built your application, the next step is to transfer it to a server. This can be done using a variety of methods, such as FTP, SSH, or a hosting service's dashboard.

Code Examples

Building the Application

Here is a simple example of how to build your application:

# Move to your project directory
cd my-preact-app

# Build the application
npm run build

This command will create a dist directory in your project root.

Transferring Build Output to a Server

If you're using an FTP client like FileZilla, you can follow these steps:

  1. Connect to your server using your FTP client.
  2. Navigate to the directory where you want to deploy your application.
  3. Upload the dist directory to your server.

Summary

In this tutorial, we've covered how to prepare a Preact/Vite application for production, how to build it, and how to transfer the build output to a server. Now you should be able to deploy your own Preact/Vite applications.

For further learning, you can explore different hosting options for your application, such as Vercel or Netlify, and how to automate your deployment process using Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) tools.

Practice Exercises

  1. Exercise: Create a simple Preact/Vite application and prepare it for production.
  2. Solution: Follow the steps in this tutorial to create your application, then use the npm run build command to prepare it for production.

  3. Exercise: Deploy your application to a server using FTP.

  4. Solution: Use an FTP client to connect to your server and upload your application's build output to a directory on your server.

  5. Exercise: Automate your deployment process using a CI/CD tool.

  6. Solution: Use a tool like Jenkins or GitHub Actions to automate your deployment process. This could involve automatically running the npm run build command whenever you push changes to your repository, then automatically uploading the build output to your server.

Remember, practice is key to mastering any skill. Keep working on different projects and deploying them to sharpen your skills.