It's been a while since I wrote something technical. I've been planning an update for my blog for a long time. I wanted to try out the app router, server components, layouts and the other cool stuff in next 13 🙈. So let's keep it short.
What are the updates?
- The app router: The blog now uses the app router and RSC(react server components).
- New design: I've wanted to update the design of the previous version for a long time. It was classic but had no artistic touch to it. So I went design hunting! Setting up a mood board and having a messy Figma file, yes! After spending some time, I came up with something I liked.
- Contentlayer: I started using Contentlayer in my last blog, and since then, I have loved it. Sourcing the local markdown files has never been this easy.
- TypeScript: Yes, the entire blog is built using typescript. Which helps write typesafe code and works well in conjunction with Contentlayer
- Switching to Vercel analytics: Since Splitbee analytics is now Vercel analytics, it's easy to set up from Vercel's dashboard.
- Enhancements to the snippets page: The snippet page now contains selected threads from Twitter. The tweets are just iframe embeds, with the Twitter v2 API being a paid service.
What is left to do?
- Codebase optimisation: Obviously! the codebase requires optimisation, getting rid of codes that are repeating, stipping down unused classes and divs etc.
- Image delivery optimisation: As you might have noticed, the blog is asset-heavy, and everything is served via Vercel's CDN, which is ok for the time being.
- Structured reusable components: The components are folder organised; as the blog grows, the number of components will also increase. Introducing storybooks and writing tests for components will ensure better-quality failsafe components.
Improvements to sitemap!
const siteMap = {
old: {
blog: 'blog.justgokul.dev',
shareSheet: 'justgokul.dev',
},
new: {
blog: 'justgokul.dev',
shareSheet: 'share.justgokul.dev',
},
};
changelog June 2023