Deploying a Static Website with Vite + TypeScript

In today’s world, creating a static website has become an essential requirement for many businesses and individuals. Whether you want to showcase your portfolio, create an online store or simply provide information to your audience, having a well-designed and functional website is crucial.

In this article, we will explore how to deploy a static website using Vite and TypeScript. Vite is a modern build tool that provides an extremely fast development experience with instant server start and hot module replacement. TypeScript, on the other hand, is a statically typed programming language that brings many benefits to web development including safer code and better tooling.

1. Setting up the Project

To get started, make sure you have Node.js installed on your computer. Then, open up your preferred command line interface and navigate to the directory where you want to create your project.

$ mkdir my-static-website
$ cd my-static-website

Next, initialize a new npm project by running the following command:

$ npm init -y

This will create a new package.json file in your project directory with default settings.

2. Installing Vite

Now that we have our project set up, let’s install Vite as a development dependency. Vite has its own CLI tool that makes it easy to create and run Vite projects.

$ npm install --save-dev vite

Once Vite is installed, we can create our project by running the following command:

$ npx create-vite

This will prompt you to choose a project template. For this tutorial, we will select the “Vanilla” template, which provides a basic setup for a static website.

3. Adding TypeScript Support

By default, Vite supports JavaScript. However, if you want to use TypeScript in your project, you need to install some additional dependencies.

$ npm install --save-dev typescript @typescript-eslint/eslint-plugin @typescript-eslint/parser eslint-plugin-typescript

After installing the dependencies, create a new file named tsconfig.json in the project root directory with the following content:

{
"compilerOptions": {
"target": "es5",
"module": "esnext",
"strict": true,
"jsx": "preserve",
"importHelpers": true,
"moduleResolution": "node",
"allowSyntheticDefaultImports": true,
"esModuleInterop": true,
"sourceMap": true,
"skipLibCheck": true,
"forceConsistentCasingInFileNames": true
}
}

This file specifies the TypeScript compiler options for your project.

4. Building and Deploying

With Vite and TypeScript set up, we can build our static website and deploy it to a hosting provider of our choice. To build the website, run the following command:

$ npm run build

This will create a dist folder in your project directory containing the optimized and minified version of your website.

To deploy your website, you can choose from various hosting providers such as Netlify, Vercel, or GitHub Pages. These providers offer simple and reliable ways to deploy static websites.

Conclusion

Deploying a static website with Vite and TypeScript is a straightforward process that provides excellent developer experience and performance. By leveraging the power of Vite and TypeScript, you can create high-quality and efficient static websites that meet your business or personal needs.