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NextJS Portfolio Site

Hamed Bahram /
2 min read

This is my own portfolio site built with NextJS and deployed to Vercel. It utilizes NextJS API routes for the API layer, eliminating the need for an extra backend server to serve the application in the first place and also to support things like database connection.

Tech stack

Selecting the tech stack when it comes to a personal portfolio site or really any content oriented website, narrows down to either using a content management system - short for CMS, or a custom solution that allows you to create your content right inside of your project typically utilizing the markdown language or the enhanced version of it which I'm using, MDX.

I'll probably have a future post at some point comparing different CMS solutions and their pros and cons, but if you are a developer and already familiar with markdown, you can read more on this post where I outline how to integrate MDX into your NextJS application.

Here is the tech stack used in this project:

  • NextJS
  • MDX
  • Tailwind
  • MongoDB
  • Vercel

Features

Here are some of the features:

  • NextJS API routes
  • Dark theme support
  • Newsletter subscription form
  • Serving static pages for better user experience

Challenges

Getting MDX set up properly was really the only challenge in terms of deciding about the site architecture and where I wanted to source my content, but other than that, working with NextJS was pretty straight forward specially given that this project didn't have much complexity.

In the pipeline

There isn't really much in the pipeline for now other than publishing more content, but here are some ideas:

  • Improving SEO
  • Maybe a "Contact us" or "Hire me" page
  • User authentication and payment options