Zero Config Deployments

Few weeks ago, we introduced Vercel as the most powerful and scalable platform for static websites and serverless functions powered by any language or framework.

This came at the expense of writing vercel.json files. Today, we are introducing Zero Config, a conventional and completely backwards-compatible approach to deployment.

Getting Started

To start, create a new project using a frontend stack of your choice. For this example, we'll create a vanilla Next.js project:

npm create next-app

Then, from within the project, with no additional configuration, run the following command (requires Vercel CLI or our integration for GitHub/GitLab):

vercel

That's it. It works for any framework or tool you can think of.

No matter if you're using Gatsby, Vue, Ember, Svelte or any other package.json project with a build script, you always get fully static or hybrid rendering out of the box.

From Frontend to Backend

Upon deployment, we optimize your frontend seamlessly and deploy it to our built-in Smart CDN. Fast to develop, build, and serve.

Now, how about adding the power of serverless functions to our site?

Let's use Gatsby for the frontend, combined with Go for the backend. For this, we'll start by creating a new Gatsby project:

gatsby new gatsby-site

This can already be deployed, zero config. To add functions, create an api directory:

Then, with no additional configuration, run the following command (requires Vercel CLI or our integration for GitHub/GitLab):

vercel

Your function will now be accessible at /api/my-function.

All our existing languages are supported and mapped by file extension. You can even use [brackets].js to define dynamic routes. To learn more, check out our docs.

Summary

Vercel is fast, efficient, scalable, and now even easier to use.

• If you are using ZEIT Now 1.0 or a third-party provider, check out our migration guide.

• If you are using Vercel, your projects will continue to work as they are. If you want to go zero-config, check out this guide.

• If you are using Next.js 9 or newer, our integration supports API routes, so absolutely nothing new to learn. Just deploy it, no config needed.

• Our development toolchain vercel dev just works, zero-config.

• Our integrations for GitHub and GitLab no longer require a vercel.json either. We've added a simple flow to import your projects from the web UI to complement it.

Special thanks to Evil Rabbit, Paco Coursey, Luc Leray, Shu Ding, Matthew Sweeney, Timothy Lorimer and Christopher Skillicorn for helping with making this release a reality.