Modern Developer Blog Template (Digital Garden Starter)

As a developer who creates content, I want to have a blog & digital garden where I can share my thoughts and ideas with the world. Now, there's not really a "perfect solution" for this currently. With included analytics, SEO, email subscriptions, modern tooling, simple design, etc. We either have to build one from scratch, use a design template and code the features, or use a CMS/no-code tool.

An open source blogging (digital gardening) template for developers using Next.js app router, MDX, Contentlayer, Tailwind CSS, @shadcn/ui , Lucide Icons, and more.

This project is from developers for developers. Please feel free to report a bug, discuss the current state, submit ideas for improvements, submit a fix, propose new features, or whatever you want. All contributions are welcome! Read more at the contributing guidelines.

If you love this template and/or use it, please give it a star on GitHub. This will help more people discover it, thus help improving the template.

Note: This project is always evolving and it's far from being perfect or even done.¹ I'm always open to suggestions and contributions. Feel free to open an issue or a PR if you have any ideas or suggestions. You can also see the roadmap for planned features if you want to contribute.

1let hello = "hello darkness";
2
3console.log(hello, "my old friend");

1let hello = "hello darkness";
2
3console.log(hello, "my old friend");

Motivation

As a developer who creates content, I want to have a blog & digital garden where I can share my thoughts and ideas with the world. Now, there's not really a "perfect solution" for this currently. With included analytics, SEO, email subscriptions, modern tooling, simple design, etc. We either have to build one from scratch, use a design template and code the features, or use a CMS/no-code tool.

Getting Started

If you want to see how I set up this template for my own digital garden, you can check out this commit with all the changes.

1. Use the repo as a template
2. Install dependencies with pnpm install
3. Edit utils/metadata.ts with your information
4. Edit utils/usesData.ts with your information
5. Edit utils/projectsData.ts with your information
6. Edit content/pages/now with your information
7. Edit content/pages/about with your information
8. Run the development server with pnpm dev

Open http://localhost:3000 in your browser to see the result.

Writing content

You can write content in Markdown or MDX. The content is located in content/ and is organized in folders. The pages folder contains the pages. The posts folder contains the blogposts. The projects folder contains the projects.

Editing list pages is done in the lib folder.

• /uses - lib/uses-data.ts
• /projects - lib/projects-data.ts
• /social - lib/social-data.ts

Deployment

You can deploy the project with Vercel or any other hosting provider. If you want to use Vercel, you can use the button at the top of this README.

1. Update package.json author information
2. Set up the NEXT_PUBLIC_BASE_URL environment variable on Vercel to point to your website's root URL
3. Build and deploy

Customization

Fonts

This project uses Inter as the default font. You can change it on app/layout.tsx using the next/fonts package.

Colors

The project uses Tailwind colors and @shadcn/ui config. Customize the colors on globals.css.

Metadata

You can change the metadata in utils/metadata.ts. This will be used around the site for titles, social links, social handles, SEO, etc.

You can edit navigation links in lib/navigation-links.ts.

Analytics

Vercel analytics is added. To configure, you need to enable it on Vercel project dashboard by selecting your Project and then click the Analytics tab and click Enable from the dialog.

Supporting other analytics providers are planned. Feel free to open an issue if you have any suggestions or a PR if you want to implement it yourself.

Newsletter subscription

WIP as I'm still deciding which email tools to support. Feel free to open an issue if you have any suggestions or a PR if you want to implement it yourself.

Hero section

You can choose between 3 different hero variants to use in app/(site)/page.tsx by changing the imported hero component.

1. HeroSimple - A simple centered hero section with image, title, socials, and subtitle.
2. HeroVideo - 2 column hero section with Videoask embed on one side and title and subtitle on the other.
3. HeroImage - 2 column hero section with image on one side and title, socials, and subtitle on the other.

Other tips & tricks

Image optimization

Optimize images in seconds for free with ImageOptim. Install on your Mac, then open the public folder in Finder. Select all images, right-click, and choose "Open with > ImageOptim". This will optimize all images in the folder.

Note: DO NOT overdo it. You can easily make images look bad with lossy compression algorithms.

Examples

• https://davidlevai.com/

Create a PR and add your blog to this list if you're using the template!

Features & Roadmap

• Basic functionality of reading pages and posts
• Basic design dark/light mode
• MDX code highlighting
• Readme.md
• robots.txt & sitemap.xml
• RSS Feed
• Reading time estimate
• LICENSE
• contributing.md
• MDX components (TOC & footnotes)
• general config & metadata (author, URL, socials, etc.)
• uses page
• Link in bio page
• OG image generation
• projects page
• about section on homepage
• search & command bar
• Vercel analytics
• Design improvements (whitespace, layout, etc.)
• 404, error, and loading pages
• Code preview component
• Code highlight improvements (copy code, theme)
• manifest.json
• newsletter integration (form, api route, keys, welcome page, previous issues)
• Post series
• Hidden content (behind email subscription)
• 100 lighthouse score
• Command bar fuzzy search in content
• Pagination
• SEO improvements
• Accessibility audit
• Other analytics providers (fathom, simplelytics, plausible, umami, etc)
• TypeScript fixes
• Redesign uses page
• Redesign projects page
• general refactor
• general cleanup
• implement content security policies
• implement a videoask-like solution for the hero section
• multi-author support (?)
• Post like counter (?)
• Visitor counter (?)
• code playground instead of code highlighting (?)
• Categories and/or tags (?)
• Commenting system (?)
• Social sharing buttons (?)
• keyboard-based navigation with hotkeys (?)
• multiple layouts (sidebar, full-width, etc.) (?)
• multilang support (?)

Inspiration & Mentions

• Delba Oliveira Personal Blog - Using and structuring table of contents with Contentlayer
• timlrx/tailwind-nextjs-starter-blog - Idea

Support

If you love this template and/or use it, please give it a star on GitHub.

• jamstack
• technology
• javascript
• frontend
• development
• opinion