Introduction

Welcome to this new post on my blog! In this post, I'll be sharing my experience of rebuilding my blog using Next.js, a powerful and flexible framework for building web applications.

As you may know, I had previously built my blog using Gatsby, a static site generator. However, after encountering several issues with image handling and the built-in GraphQL API, I decided to give Next.js another try.

Why Next.js?

One of the main reasons I switched to Next.js was the huge improvements made to the framework in recent years. The framework now offers better performance, improved developer experience, and more robust features, making it a great choice for building web applications. Additionally, Next.js also offers excellent SEO and referencing capabilities, which were important considerations for my blog.

Rebuilding my Blog

Rebuilding my blog with Next.js was a much smoother experience compared to my previous attempts with Gatsby. The framework was more stable and required less time spent on package reinstallations. Additionally, Next.js also offers better support for image handling, which was a major pain point with Gatsby.

Content Management

As for content management, I had originally chosen to use Strapi, but I encountered problems with both the deployment and the management of the blog posts. So, I ended up hosting the blog posts locally on the server, which was a major improvement considering my use cases and development time.

Deployment

The deployment process for my blog was also more streamlined and efficient. I used Vercel to build and deploy the production files, which automates the process and saves me a lot of time. If you've never used Vercel, I highly encourage you giving it a try.

Conclusion

Rebuilding my blog using Next.js was a great decision, and I couldn't be happier with the results. The framework offers improved performance, a better developer experience, and more robust features. However, using Strapi for content management proved to be a challenge, and I had to find an alternative solution. But in the end, hosting blog posts locally worked out well. I highly recommend Next.js for anyone looking to build a web application. And, as always, you can find the code for my blog on my Github repository. Thanks for reading, and have a great day!