Building a Modern Technical Blog with Next.js
Introduction
In an era where AI-powered tools like ChatGPT can provide instant answers to technical questions, one might question the value of maintaining a technical blog. However, the process of building and documenting your learning journey offers unique benefits that go beyond immediate knowledge retrieval.
This post explores why I built this blog from scratch, the technical decisions behind it, and the lessons learned from choosing Next.js as the foundation for a modern content platform.
The Value of Building vs. Consuming
While static site generators like Jekyll, Hugo, and Flask have proven their worth, I chose to build a custom solution using Next.js for several reasons:
Hands-on Learning Reading documentation and watching tutorials provides theoretical knowledge, but building a production application forces you to understand how components integrate, handle edge cases, and make architectural trade-offs.
Deep Understanding When you build something from scratch, you gain intimate knowledge of:
- How routing and navigation work in Next.js
- MDX content processing and rendering pipelines
- Build optimization and static site generation
- Component composition patterns with React
Technical Confidence Building your own platform gives you the confidence to modify, extend, and debug when issues arise. You're not constrained by framework limitations or template restrictions.
Knowledge Archival in the AI Era
This blog serves as a personal knowledge base—a curated collection of problems solved, technologies explored, and patterns discovered. Unlike AI-generated answers that require precise prompting, this archive reflects my specific use cases, challenges, and solutions.
As technologies like Server Name Indication (SNI) and CI/CD pipelines become more complex, having documented references of your implementation decisions becomes invaluable for future projects.
Technical Architecture
This blog is built on a modern JAMstack architecture, leveraging Next.js 14's App Router and static site generation capabilities. Here's an overview of the key technologies and design decisions:
Core Framework Stack
Next.js 14 serves as the foundation, providing:
- App Router for file-based routing and layouts
- Server and client components for optimized rendering
- Static site generation for optimal performance
- Built-in image optimization
Velite handles content management, transforming MDX files into type-safe TypeScript data at build time. This approach offers several advantages over traditional CMS solutions:
- Content lives alongside code in version control
- Type safety ensures content schema compliance
- Build-time processing eliminates runtime overhead
- Simplified deployment without database dependencies
Content Processing Pipeline
The MDX processing pipeline uses a sophisticated plugin chain:
- rehype-slug - Automatically generates heading IDs for anchor links
- rehype-pretty-code - Provides syntax highlighting powered by Shiki
- rehype-autolink-headings - Adds clickable anchor links to headings
- rehype-toc - Generates table of contents from document structure
This pipeline transforms raw MDX content into fully-featured, accessible technical documentation.
UI Components and Styling
shadcn/ui provides a foundation of accessible, customizable components built on Radix UI primitives. Unlike traditional component libraries, shadcn/ui components are copied into your project, giving you full control over implementation and styling.
Tailwind CSS handles styling with a utility-first approach, enabling rapid development while maintaining consistency. The modern font stack ensures optimal typography across different operating systems without external font loading.
Implementation Guide
Setting Up the Project
Initialize a new Next.js project with TypeScript and Tailwind CSS:
npx create-next-app@latest my-blog --typescript --tailwind --eslint
cd my-blogIntegrating shadcn/ui
Initialize shadcn/ui to set up the component infrastructure:
npx shadcn@latest initAdd essential UI components:
npx shadcn@latest add button badge card separatorConfiguring Content Management
Install Velite and required rehype plugins:
npm install velite
npm install -D rehype-pretty-code rehype-autolink-headings rehype-slug @rehype-pretty/transformersConfigure Velite in velite.config.ts to process MDX files from your content directory. The configuration defines your content schema, output paths, and MDX processing plugins.
Typography Configuration
Configure Next.js to use Google Fonts with proper optimization:
import { Inter as FontSans } from "next/font/google"
const fontSans = FontSans({
subsets: ["latin"],
variable: "--font-sans",
})Extend Tailwind's font family configuration:
const { fontFamily } = require("tailwindcss/defaultTheme")
module.exports = {
theme: {
extend: {
fontFamily: {
sans: ["var(--font-sans)", ...fontFamily.sans],
},
},
},
}Lessons Learned
Content Strategy
Completed Enhancements:
- Implemented table of contents generation for improved navigation
- Added syntax-highlighted code blocks with copy functionality ( read more)
- Built a full-text search system using Algolia ( implementation details)
- Created a tagging system for content categorization
- Developed custom MDX link components ( see approach)
Future Enhancements
Exploring Advanced Features:
- Integration with Notion API for remote content management
- Authentication system for draft vs. published content workflows
- AI-powered content suggestions and search enhancements
- Progressive feature additions based on usage patterns
Key Takeaways
Building a technical blog from scratch taught me valuable lessons about modern web development:
- Type Safety Matters - Velite's compile-time type generation prevents content schema errors
- Build-Time Optimization - Pre-rendering content at build time dramatically improves performance
- Component Composition - shadcn/ui's approach of owned components provides better long-term maintainability
- Developer Experience - Hot reload, TypeScript, and modern tooling make iteration fast and enjoyable