🚀 Build React App for Production

When your React app is ready to go live, you need to optimize and build it for production. React provides a built-in way to do this using npm run build.

🧱 1. Run Build Command

npm run build

This creates an optimized production build in the /build folder.

📦 2. Output Structure

The build folder contains:

• index.html – entry point
• static/js – minified JS bundles
• static/css – stylesheets
• assets – images and other resources

🌐 3. Test Locally

Use a static server to preview your build locally:

npm install -g serve
serve -s build

🚚 4. Deploy Options

• GitHub Pages – For personal projects
• Vercel / Netlify – One-click deployment with Git integration
• Firebase / Render / Railway – Great for full-stack deployment
• Custom Hosting – Upload the build folder to any static hosting provider (Apache, Nginx, cPanel)

🔒 5. Set Environment Variables

In production, React reads variables from .env files starting with REACT_APP_.

REACT_APP_API_URL=https://api.example.com

📦 6. Extra Optimization (Optional)

• Use React.lazy and Suspense for lazy loading components
• Remove unused dependencies and console logs
• Analyze your bundle using source-map-explorer