Recipes

A static marketing site next to Payload Stack, nightly rebuilds, notifying on failure, a preview target, skipping bulk imports, the mock server.

A static marketing site next to a Payload app

Payload runs in one Vercel project, the marketing site (Astro, static Next) in another. Create a deploy hook on the marketing project and track the collections that feed it:

vercelPlugin({
  targets: [{ slug: 'marketing', label: 'Marketing site', hook: process.env.VERCEL_DEPLOY_HOOK_MARKETING, url: 'https://example.com' }],
  token: process.env.VERCEL_TOKEN,
  collections: { pages: true, posts: true, testimonials: true },
  globals: { header: true, footer: true },
})

Editors publish in Payload; a minute later the site rebuilds. The app itself keeps using ISR for its own pages.

Nightly rebuild for date-dependent content

With the Action Scheduler plugin, or any cron that hits /api/vercel/tick:

payload.scheduler.cron('site.rebuild', {}, { cron: '0 4 * * *', tz: 'Europe/Warsaw' })
// handler:
defineAction({ slug: 'site.rebuild', handler: async ({ req }) => { await req.payload.vercel.deploy({ reason: 'Nightly rebuild', req }) } })

Notify on failure

hooks: {
  onError: async ({ record }) => {
    await payload.emails.send('deploy-failed', { input: { target: record.target, message: record.errorMessage ?? 'unknown', url: record.inspectorUrl } })
  },
}

A preview target that renders drafts

A second hook on a preview branch, tracked with on: 'change' so every save — drafts included — rebuilds the preview:

targets: [
  { slug: 'production', hook: process.env.VERCEL_DEPLOY_HOOK_PRODUCTION },
  { slug: 'preview', hook: process.env.VERCEL_DEPLOY_HOOK_PREVIEW },
],
collections: { pages: { targets: ['production'] }, 'pages-preview': { on: 'change', targets: ['preview'] } },

Bulk imports without a hundred pending rows

await payload.create({ collection: 'products', data, context: { vercelSkip: true } })
// …then one deployment for the lot:
await payload.vercel.deploy({ target: 'production', reason: 'Product import' })

Developing without a Vercel account

The package ships a mock of the Vercel surface the plugin uses:

pnpm dev:mock-vercel   # :3399 — hooks, /v7/deployments, /v13/deployments/:id, cancel, rollback

Point the hook URLs and VERCEL_API_BASE at it (see dev/.env.example). Builds go QUEUED → BUILDING → READY on timers; a hook id containing fail fails the build; curl -X POST :3399/__mock/external simulates a git push.