Modern Developer Blog Template (Digital Garden Starter)

Content Creator

Software Engineer

Web Developer

Next.js

React

Tailwind CSS

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

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. 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.

Inspiration & Mentions

Support

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.

So I decided to build a solution that I would use myself. This is the result.

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.

Use the repo as a template

Install dependencies with pnpm install

Edit utils/metadata.ts with your information and general settings

Edit utils/uses-data.ts with software & hardware you use

Edit utils/projects-data.ts with your projects

Edit utils/navigation-links.ts with the links you want in the navigation

Edit content/pages/now with your availability

Edit content/pages/about with your bio

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

Frontmatter

Frontmatter is used to define metadata for pages and posts. It's located at the top of the file and is written in YAML. You can define the following fields:

title - The title of the page/post

description - The description of the page/post

publishedDate - The date of the post (not used on pages)

lastUpdatedDate - The date of the page/post

tags - List of tags for the post. You can add new tags by adding them to the tagOptions list. (not used on pages)

series - The series of the post. A series has a title and an order number for a post. (not used on pages)

author - The author of the post. An author has a name, and image. (not used on pages)

status - Whether the page/post is published or draft

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.

Update package.json author information

Publish your repo to GitHub

Create a new project on Vercel and import your repo

Set up the NEXT_PUBLIC_BASE_URL environment variable on Vercel to point to your website's root URL

If you plan to use analytics and/or newsletter providers, set up the respective environment variables on Vercel

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.

Signature

There's a signature component to use in the footer. You can edit the signature on components/signature.tsx. I used Figma to write the signature with Caveat font and exported it as SVG. You can do the same and update the SVG in the component.

Images

Images and other media files are located in public/ directory. You can use them in your content by using the /<filename>.<ext> path.

Homepage Avatar

Here's a quick tutorial on how to make a similar avatar in Figma in under 2 minutes. https://youtu.be/Ny-VaEEhJKM

Metadata

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

Navigation

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

Social links

You can edit social links in lib/social-data.ts. You can also add new social links by adding them to the file and using the platform name as the key and the URL as the value. The SocialButton component will automatically add the icon for the platform if it's supported in simple-icons.

Analytics

Vercel

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.

Umami

Umami is a simple, easy to use, web analytics solution with self-hosting option! You can read more about it on Umami website. (Hint: On Railway, you can self-host it low cost or even free).

Configure: Set NEXT_PUBLIC_UMAMI_SCRIPT_URL & NEXT_PUBLIC_UMAMI_WEBSITE_ID environment variables on your .env.local file and on Vercel dashboard.

Plausible

Plausible is a simple, lightweight, open-source alternative to Google Analytics. You can read more about it on Plausible website.

Configure: Set NEXT_PUBLIC_PLAUSIBLE_DOMAIN & NEXT_PUBLIC_PLAUSIBLE_SCRIPT_URL environment variables on your .env.local file and on Vercel dashboard. If you're concerned about ad blockers, you can proxy the plausible script through your own domain. You can read more about it here.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic, currently as a platform inside the Google Marketing Platform brand. You can read more about it on Google Analytics website.

Configure: Set NEXT_PUBLIC_GOOGLE_ANALYTICS_ID environment variable on your .env.local file and on Vercel dashboard.

Other analytics providers

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

Newsletter subscription

MailerLite

MailerLite is a simple email marketing tool for all types of businesses. You can read more about it on MailerLite website.

Configure: Set EMAIL_API_BASE, EMAIL_API_KEY, and EMAIL_GROUP_ID environment variables on your .env.local file and on Vercel dashboard.

Other newsletter providers

Supporting other newsletter providers are in progress. 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.

HeroSimple - A simple centered hero section with image, title, and subtitle.

HeroVideo - 2 column hero section with Videoask embed on one side and title and subtitle on the other.

HeroImage - 2 column hero section with image on one side and title, and subtitle on the other.

HeroMinimal - small hero section name & job title

Other tips & tricks

Image optimization

I recommend optimizing images fast 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/ - My own digital garden

Dragons and Codes Digital Garden - Simple modifications Source

Shafie Mukhre's Blog - Source

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

Analytics: Vercel, Umami, Plausible, Google Analytics

Post series

Not found page

contributing docs

Docs refresh

Social icons component

Social sharing buttons

Contributing

Contributors

@thedevdavid

@br4adam

This project is from developers for developers. All contributions are welcome! Please feel free to:

Report a bug

Discuss the current state and ideas for improvements

Submit a fix

Propose new features

How?

Fork the repo and create your branch from develop.

Add your code.

Update the documentation.

Make sure your code lints and the app builds.

Open pull request to develop branch.

Any contributions you make will be under the MIT Software License. In short, when you submit code changes, your submissions are understood to be under the same MIT License that covers the project. Code of Conduct can be found here.