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Sparvero12
Sparvero12

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How to Utilize Vercel

What is Vercel

Simply put, Vercel is an easy to use and very powerful tool to build, launch deploy and maintain any kind of site you want. Vercel is a "Function as a Service" platform which is a type of cloud-computing service that allows the execution of code in response to triggers without having to go through all the steps associated with building and launching microservices. Of course, the service is "free" but a paid membership gives you access to more features, however, a free account should suffice for most users needs.

Get Started

To get started simply go to vercel.com and create an account. Since I primarily use github, I created an account with my github account. After you create your account, you'll be at the vercel dashboard.

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Next simply click the New Project button. Immediately afterward you will be asked which repo you want to import.

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Vercel will then present a page with configurations you can alter, this includes things such as the root directory, build and output settings and Environment variables. After setting the configurations the way you like, simply click the blue Deploy button and watch as Vercel deploys your website for you.

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Just like that its done!
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My Experience with Vercel

My background in web development is very limited, I only started with Micro front end services a few months ago. That's my background, someone who never used a service like this before and never needed to. However, Vercel was like a dream to use. I simply imported my repo and clicked deploy and it worked! It was just simple and it worked. If I continue to need to deploy sites or test components, I will always use vercel before any other method.

Why Vercel over other CI/CD Methods?

Simply put the answer is simplicity. Vercel allows you to skip multiple steps, which eliminates the chance that errors occur during that step. It allows developers to deploy and test web components in easiest way possible, and when deployment and testing is easier, development itself gets slightly easier as well. After all, isn't that what web developers want? Something to make their lives easier that actually works?

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