Nabendu

Posted on Nov 14, 2019 • Edited on Jun 18, 2020 • Originally published at thewebdev.tech

Creating Blog site using Stackbit, GatsbyJS and DEV -1

#gatsby #webdev #react #javascript

I started my blogging journey 1.5 years back on medium and had written 98 blogs till date. It had soon become an habit to write technical articles.

I had got good traction on medium, but once dev.to was launched i started re-publishing my articles there also. I got a lot of followers and views in dev.to.

It is time for me to create my own blog site and was thinking to create the same in GatsbyJS. There are many ways to create blog site with GatsbyJS, but i found an article from Ben Halpern (Creator of dev.to) about there collaboration with Stackbit.

You need to follow the very simple process in this article and your personal blog site will be ready in no time.

You just need to follow 4 steps.

Visit the Stackbit Creation Workflow and choose a theme. I had chosen Fjord.

Choose theme

Then you need to choose your static site generator. Here i had chosen Gatsby.

Choose Gatsby

Then you need to connect to your Github and DEV accounts.

Connect both DEV and Github

Next, you need to click on “Create your Project” and stackbit will create a new blog site for you. Then you need to connect to a Netlify account to keep the site live.

Site is live

And by following these simple steps, my blog site became live at https://nabendu-blog-d8fee.netlify.com/

Live site

Now, whenever i publish a post in DEV(dev.to), it will be reflected here. This actually makes DEV a headless CMS for my site.

Now, as you can see from above there is some work to be done, like editing the Home page, buying a good domain name and connecting in netlify, adding some plugins from gatsby.

Now, stackbit created an repository in my github. So, i am heading over there and following the instructions.

Stackbit instructions

But first i will git clone my repository in my Desktop

git clone

Next, i will change to the directory an do npm install

npm install

Now, we need to go to the Stackbit dashboard to get our API keys.

API Keys

Then we need to assign this key to STACKBIT_API_KEY

Then as per the github instruction, run the below command. It seems to fetch all posts.

Fetching all posts

Then as per the instructions, running npm run develop

npm run

Once it complied successfully, opening http://localhost:8000/ . And we successfully created our local development environment.

localhost

Now, let’s open the project in VSCode. The main thing which we need to edit is the Home Page. The content comes from src -> pages -> index.md

index.md

We will now update the content in index.md

Updated index.md

Let’s commit the changes and push it to our github.

Push to github

It will also start updating the site in netlify.

Site getting updated

And after sometime the changes are pushed to production.

Site updated

This completes first part of the post. In the next part(and my 100th blog), i will be buying a good domain name and connecting in netlify, adding some plugins from gatsby like SEO, google analytics.

Top comments (14)

Cristina Ruth • Nov 25 '19

Didn't know about StackBit. Thanks for this!

I was struggling to find an easy, one click setup to get my personal site up and running without paying a $15/mo fee. So I was trying to set it up myself and having limited time, it was taking a while.

I don't see any pricing info on StackBit though. Wonder what that looks like.

Nabendu • Nov 28 '19

You are Welcome. We have a Stackbit Developer Advocate here in the comment for this blog. Please DM him on twitter twitter.com/remotesynth

Dennis Webb • Nov 14 '19

Isn't it StackBit not SlackBit?

Nabendu • Nov 14 '19

Thanks Dennis for bringing that to my notice. Rectified the same.

Raulis Masiukas • Nov 14 '19

Thanks for this, Nabendu. Great article!

Nabendu • Nov 14 '19

Thanks Raulis

Francesca Capochiani 🌺 • Dec 14 '19

These feature articles, news and analyses about StackBit are a good contributions for this cultural landscape.

Thank you @nabendu82 to show us the power of that platform.

Stephen Smith • Nov 14 '19

Good article. I enjoyed it. I learned a few things. Thanks!

Nabendu • Nov 15 '19

Thanks Stephen

Brian Rinaldi • Nov 14 '19

👋 Stackbit Developer Advocate here. Thanks so much for the post! Glad to hear it was a good experience for you so far. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions.