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Posted on Jul 29

How I Built My First Next.js Blog Site with Dynamic Markdown With TipTap, ISR, and What’s Coming Next

#webdev #nextjs #javascript #tiptap

From Idea to MVP: How I Built My First Next.js Blog with Markdown Stored in MongoDB

"Could I actually build a custom blog — from scratch — for a real client?"

This question changed everything.

🌱 A Developer's First Real Project

As a learning developer, I’ve built a bunch of small projects, but this was different.

A real client needed a blog — something modern, scalable, and flexible.

Instead of using WordPress or templates, I decided to build a Next.js app powered by MongoDB, with full markdown support and ISR for speed.

🧠 Why Next.js + MongoDB?

I chose Next.js for its flexibility:

⚡ App Router for powerful routing and layouts
🔁 Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR) to keep things fast
🧩 SEO meta and dynamic paths with static generation

And for storage?

I didn’t go with .md files.

Instead, I stored markdown content directly in MongoDB.

Why?

Because the client wanted:

Editable content from a dashboard (coming soon!)
Centralized storage with MongoDB Atlas
Future plans for team-based editing and API-based control

So every post has markdown like this in the DB:

{
  "title": "Welcome to My Blog",
  "slug": "welcome-to-my-blog",
  "category": "tech",
  "content": "## Hello World\nThis is a blog written in markdown...",
  "createdAt": "2025-07-01"
}

On the frontend, I use a markdown parser like marked to render it.

🚀 First Version: Features I Built

✅ Dynamic blog routes using slugs
✅ SEO-friendly meta titles + Open Graph
✅ Category pages like /tech, /ai, /dev
✅ Pagination with ISR (yes, even /p/2 is static!)
✅ Responsive design with Tailwind CSS
✅ Clean API routes with Mongoose + Next.js server actions

👉 Here’s the Live Demo Techolyze

🧪 Real Challenges I Faced

Some stuff took time to figure out:

Handling markdown parsing securely
Creating reusable layouts using the new App Router
Using generateStaticParams and generateMetadata for dynamic routing
Getting ISR to work with MongoDB (solved using revalidation and smart fetching)

But every challenge taught me something I couldn’t learn from tutorials.

🔮 What’s Coming Next

This is just version 1 — a working MVP.

Here’s what I’m building next:

✍️ A full-featured Markdown editor (based on Tiptap)
🧑‍💻 Admin dashboard to add/edit posts directly
🌍 Tag system and multi-category filters
💻 Making it fully open-source with docs and setup guides

And yes — the full code will be public soon.

🔓 Open Source Coming Soon!

📍 GitHub Repo: (link coming soon)

Follow me @osmanbey918 — I’ll be releasing the entire project publicly soon.

It’ll be easy to fork, set up with your MongoDB URI, and launch your own blog — whether for learning or real use.

💬 Let’s Talk!

What do you think about using MongoDB + Markdown for content instead of a CMS?

Would you use this stack for your blog?

Drop a comment — and let’s connect if you're building something similar.

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