Building This Site

A few notes on the technical decisions behind this site.

Stack

• Next.js 16 — App Router, Server Components by default
• MDX — Write blog posts in Markdown with React components when needed
• Tailwind CSS — Utility-first styling, fast iteration
• Vercel — Deploy on push, automatic previews

Why MDX?

I wanted the simplicity of writing in Markdown but the flexibility to embed custom components when I need them. MDX gives you both.

Each post exports a meta object with title, date, and tags. The blog index reads these at build time to generate the post list.

export const meta = {
  title: "Building This Site",
  date: "2025-01-14",
  description: "Technical notes...",
  tags: ["technical", "next.js"],
};

Typography

I'm using Geist, Vercel's font family. It's clean and readable, with a nice monospace variant for code.

The styling is intentionally minimal—generous whitespace, clear hierarchy, and almost no decoration. Content first.

What I'd add next

• RSS feed for the blog
• Syntax highlighting with Shiki or Prism
• Search (maybe with Pagefind)
• A /uses page

But for now, this is enough to start writing.