---
title: 'Introducing Tailwind Nexjs Starter Blog'
date: '2021-01-11'
tags: ['nextjs', 'tailwind', 'guide']
draft: false
summary: 'A more detailed introduction on the tailwind nextjs starter template, key features, extending the blog and deployment options.'
---

![tailwind-nextjs-banner](/public/static/images/twitter-card.png)

# Tailwind Nextjs Starter Blog

This is a [Next.js](https://nextjs.org/), [Tailwind CSS](https://tailwindcss.com/) blogging starter template. Comes out of the box configured with the latest technologies to make technical writing a breeze. Easily configurable and customizable. Perfect as a replacement to existing Jekyll and Hugo individual blogs.

## Motivation

I wanted to port my existing blog to Nextjs and Tailwind CSS but there was no easy out of the box template to use so I decided to create one.

It is inspired by [Lee Robinson's blog](https://github.com/leerob/leerob.io), but focuses only on static site generation. Design is adapted from [Tailwindlabs blog](https://github.com/tailwindlabs/blog.tailwindcss.com).

I wanted it to be nearly as feature-rich as popular blogging templates like [beautiful-jekyll](https://github.com/daattali/beautiful-jekyll) and [Hugo Academic](https://github.com/wowchemy/wowchemy-hugo-modules) but with the best of React's ecosystem and current web development's best practices.

## Features

- Easy styling customization with [Tailwind 2.0](https://blog.tailwindcss.com/tailwindcss-v2)
- Near perfect lighthouse score - [Lighthouse report](https://www.webpagetest.org/result/210111_DiC1_08f3670c3430bf4a9b76fc3b927716c5/)
- Lightweight, 43kB first load JS, uses Preact in production build
- Mobile-friendly view
- Light and dark theme
- [MDX - write JSX in markdown documents!](https://mdxjs.com/)
- Server-side syntax highlighting with [rehype-prism](https://github.com/mapbox/rehype-prism)
- Math display supported via [KaTeX](https://katex.org/)
- Automatic image optimization via [next/image](https://nextjs.org/docs/basic-features/image-optimization)
- Flexible data retrieval with [next-mdx-remote](https://github.com/hashicorp/next-mdx-remote)
- Support for tags - each unique tag will be its own page
- SEO friendly with RSS feed, sitemaps and more!

## Quick Start Guide

1. Fork this project
2. Rename the project to `<yourusername>.github.io`
3. Modify `siteMetadata.json` and blog posts
4. Deploy on Vercel

## Development

First, run the development server:

```bash
npm start
# or
npm run dev
```

Open [http://localhost:3000](http://localhost:3000) with your browser to see the result.

You can start editing the page by modifying `pages/index.js`. The page auto-updates as you edit the file.

## Extend / Customize

`data/siteMetadata.json` - contains most of the site related information which should be modified for a user's need.

`data/logo.svg` - replace with your own logo.

`data/blog` - replace with your own blog posts.

`public/static` - store assets such as images and favicons.

`css/tailwind.css` - contains the tailwind stylesheet which can be modified to change the overall look and feel of the site.

`components/social-icons` - to add other icons, simply copy an svg file from [Simple Icons](https://simpleicons.org/) and map them in `index.js`. Other icons uses [heroicons](https://heroicons.com/).

`components/MDXComponents.js` - pass your own JSX code or React component by specifying it over here. You can then call them directly in the `.mdx` or `.md` file. By default, a custom link and image component is passed.

`layouts` - main templates used in pages.

`pages` - pages to route to. Read the [Next.js documentation](https://nextjs.org/docs) for more information

## Deploy

**Vercel**  
[![Deploy with Vercel](https://vercel.com/button)](https://vercel.com/new/git/external?repository-url=https://github.com/timlrx/tailwind-nextjs-starter-blog)

The easiest way to deploy the template is to use the [Vercel Platform](https://vercel.com) from the creators of Next.js. Check out the [Next.js deployment documentation](https://nextjs.org/docs/deployment) for more details.

**Netlify / Github Pages / Firebase etc.**  
As the template uses `next/image` for image optimization, additional configurations has to be made to deploy on other popular static hosting websites like [Netlify](https://www.netlify.com/) or [Github Pages](https://pages.github.com/). An alternative image optimization provider such as Imgix, Cloudinary or Akamai has to be used. Alternatively, replace the `next/image` component with a standard `<img>` tag. See [`next/image` documentation](https://nextjs.org/docs/basic-features/image-optimization) for more details.
