First Post

First Post

I have moved my blog from Medium to Notion, which I have integrated into this website!

Published: Fri, 11 Aug 2023Last Updated: Sun, 1 Oct 2023
notionblogsveltekitnextjs

Version 4: Welcome to the blog!


Why?

I used to seldom write on Medium and have a few viral articles. But as I aim to be a more frequent writer, I decided to move the blog here!

Some History?

Well, I am a software developer especially crafting web experiences like these. By the way, I previously also had my blog about four years ago; I built that by watching a Django tutorial (back then, I was happy with Python, but now I'm not too fond of it).
I also had zero understanding of rendering and did not know any frontend library back then—a noob, I would say. But now, I know what I want to do and how to do it better than at least the noob.
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Over the years, this website went from Django to Client Side React to NextJS to SvelteKit but is now back to NextJS.

How did I build this?

I would not give it out if you want the exact code. But all the major project dependencies are listed at the bottom of the page.
The only reason:
  • It is a custom solution.
In a nutshell, this how the architecture for a blog powered by Notion would look like!
Architecture Image (Note: This architecture was initially made with SvelteKit in mind the new architecture uses NextJS and some other interesting libraries!)
Architecture Image (Note: This architecture was initially made with SvelteKit in mind the new architecture uses NextJS and some other interesting libraries!)
Notion as a CMS is super powerful, and some startups have made it their primary product.
The best part about using NextJS is that images, fonts, and most assets are optimised. I also have used the script by Guillermo de la Puente to move the Notion hosted images to Cloudinary! Do check his post on a similar migration, that post and some of the code has been a good inspiration. But mind you he built it with NextJS’s Pages Router whereas I have used the App Router.
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Notion hosted images have short lived URLs (1 hour) meaning the images will be broken if you use SSG (Static Site Generation).

Upcoming Features

There are more features I am iterating on for V2 or V3.
Preview and Live Modes
Filtering posts based on tags and dates
Trigger the rebuild on a new blog post (NextJS provides an ability to revalidate a path)
Paywall (How can I paywall some of these blog posts)
Newsletter Subscription
Support reactions

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I do guide on how to learn React and build out such applications for a small fee at topmate!.

Technologies Used