Netlify Compose 2024 was all about building a better web together. The two-day event highlighted the importance of togetherness, proven through thoughtful, purpose-built advancements in AI, extensions, and workflow optimization.
This year we introduced some powerful platform features to enhance workflows, productivity, and security ultimately helping entire web teams improve their contributions to their websites and applications:
- Turn unstructured content into ready-to-publish pages with AI-Assisted Publishing
- Integrate ready-made third-party services or build personalized interfaces inside the Netlify app to create customized workflows with Netlify Extensions
- Construct durable, event-driven workflows seamlessly on any Netlify site with Async Workloads
- Extend the maximum duration of Netlify Functions for up to 30 seconds
- Block common malicious request patterns with a Web Application Firewall (WAF) managed by Netlify
If reading’s not your preference, check out the live keynote to see demos of the features mentioned above—now available on the Netlify platform. There you’ll also find all the session recordings.
Today we’re unveiling a bunch of new features and guides announced first at Compose 🧵 pic.twitter.com/De5dW5R1rx
— Netlify (@Netlify) October 3, 2024
Compose 2024 solidifies why composable is a team effort
At most conferences, music is used to introduce speakers, fill the silence during breaks, and pump up the party during networking events, but not as commonly is music used to make a point. To kick off his keynote, Netlify CEO Matt Biilmann played the Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven to drive home an analogy.
“I like to think about classical composers as the original programmers. They’re writing down these complex compositions to be executed not by a computer, but by a musician or an orchestra.”
Much like a composer stringing together notes on a page to deliver a final product to be played by an orchestra, composable architectures take isolated applications that are simple on their own, but together create complex applications used by developers and web teams.
When you start reframing how you think about building for the web as a team effort, then you can start bridging the gap between developers, marketers, and other content contributors who all want to build delightful, helpful, converting, and intuitive experiences for their customers or users.
This idea of togetherness inspired all of our product announcements this year.
Working with AI-Assisted Publishing
Traditionally, content creators have faced the tedious task of converting their creative work from platforms like Google Docs and Notion into formats suitable for publication. This often involves manual adjustments and compromises to fit the specifications of headless CMSs (or worse, legacy CMS platforms with template-based publishing), leading to inefficiencies and potential loss of creative intent.
If you’d like to try it for yourself, join our private beta.
Just interviewed, Mathias Biilmann CEO and co-founder of @Netlify, on AI's impact on web development. Here are 5 key insights: 👇#WebDev #AI #Netlifyhttps://t.co/ffd1h9fkgL
— Bradley Taylor (@digitalatscale_) October 8, 2024
Creating powerful, customized workflows with Netlify Extensions
Netlify Extensions allow you to choose from integrations and specialized features that extend the value of the Netlify platform. Whether you’re integrating with popular tools like DigitalOcean, Supabase, LaunchDarkly, and Contentful, or leveraging new platform features such as Async Workloads, Skew Protection, or Edge-Side Includes, there’s something here for every developer.
You can discover these extensions in the in-app Extensions Directory and start adding them to your projects with just a click:
Queue the developer education team for quick-start guides writing data with Supabase or Turso extensions.
“We share with Netlify the understanding that composability allows you to build with the best pieces that you need, with none of the hype and all of the benefits. You will now spend even less time worrying about connectors and can focus on building composable applications for today’s fast-paced environment.” - Glauber Costa, CEO, Turso
This is why Netlify Extensions matter. Less time integrating, more time building.
Getting started with Netlify Async Workloads
At Compose 2024, we launched Async Workloads—a Netlify-built extension—which empowers developers to construct durable, event-driven workflows seamlessly on any Netlify site. Whether you’re handling AI workloads, mission-critical systems, or large batch processing, Async Workloads offers unparalleled reliability without the hassle of managing additional infrastructure, such as queues, workers, or state management.
Handling the nuances of durable execution, scheduling, and retrying on a serverless platform can be a difficult challenge, however, Async Workloads removes the burden and all the complexities that come with building durable functions yourself.
Now you can focus on functionality rather than infrastructure management.
If you’re curious about how to start using Async Workloads, our developer education team produced a helpful guide for getting started. You can also review our documentation to understand its key features and how to configure it.
What else went down at Compose 2024?
Beyond developer- and web team-centric product announcements, Compose 2024 was a bustling meetup of partners and on-site coding developers. Let’s take a peek into some of the other goings on from the event.
Developer code challenge
To foster collaboration (and competition, of course) we designed a code challenge to give onsite developers a hands-on activity coding with Netlify’s latest platform primitives like Image CDN and Blobs, as well as the all-new extensions mentioned above.
As a result, the winners received an iPad Air, Sony XM5 headphones, Nintendo Switch, and of course, bragging rights.
Partner day
Pushing forward the idea of building world-class websites, stores, and applications together, we hosted a partner day that brought together over 80 experts from 44 agencies and tech partners who aimed their eyes at helping businesses build the next generation of digital experiences.
This annual event provides our partners with a chance to engage with our entire leadership team, ask questions, and hear about the latest news and launches, so they can provide the white glove service so many organizations need to make the move to composable.
Netlify celebrates 5 million developers
Recently, we celebrated a big milestone: Over 5 million developers have signed up for Netlify.
If you haven’t already, read our note from our CEO and play the interactive 3D game built on the platform.
Let’s build a better web, together
Building for the modern web involves a lot of chores. Developers of yesterday face challenges with CI/CD, cache invalidation, rollback controls, and more. Marketers and content contributors face chores submitting tickets for seemingly simple website edits and building within templates. Not anymore. Netlify is the essential platform for removing unnecessary chores so you can take ideas from inspiration to production with ease.
If you’d like to give Netlify a try, sign up for free today, or for more complex use cases, request a conversation with one of our experts.
