How Lodash Serves 400K Monthly Visitors with Offline-First Performance on Netlify

What is it?

Lodash is JavaScript utility library. After 4 years of having a PHP based website it was time for a redesign. I wanted the site to be open source & run on a gh-pages friendly stack. Netlify took things to the next level. Lodash.com uses a service worker to download the entire site for offline use on your first visit. It also uses resource hints (prefetch, preconnect, preload, & prerender) for speedier page loads. [The site gets more than 400,000 page views a month.] Resource hints that I compiled with the Netlify build cmd into a headers file. The build cmd invokes a Gulp task to generate app icons, headers, redirects, compile JS, & minify resources. I use custom headers to enforce security headers like CSP too.

One of the cool bits is that we’re actually compiling in the _redirects into the service worker so that redirects work even when offline. It also makes query strings pass through for redirects too.

Why Netlify?

I originally chose Netlify because of its HTTPS support for custom domains. After trying it I quickly found that it offered a freedom of build process, jekyll plugins, redirects, & header configs that ended up being critical to lodash.com.

Favorite Feature?

I love how painless everything is. Setting up HTTPS, redirects, headers, GeoIP, build processes were all super simple. And if I had a question it was answered fast. (You all rock. I’m spreading the word.)