Overview

A post on the new features introduced in v1.0. New features:

Theme colors
Xdm MDX compiler
Layouts
Multiple authors
Analytics
Blog comments system
Copy button for code blocks
Line highlighting and line numbers

First load JS decreased from 43kB to 38kB despite all the new features added!

See upgrade guide below if you are migrating from v0 version of the template.

Theme colors

You can easily modify the theme color by changing the primary attribute in the tailwind config file:

tailwind.config.js

theme: {
    colors: {
      primary: colors.teal,
      gray: colors.trueGray,
      ...
    }
  ...
}

The primary color attribute should be assigned an object with keys from 50, 100, 200 ... 900 and the corresponding color code values.

Tailwind includes great default color palettes that can be used for theming your own website. Check out customizing colors documentation page for the full range of options.

Migrating from v1? You can revert to the previous theme by setting primary to colors.sky (Tailwind 2.2.2 and above, otherwise colors.lightBlue) and changing gray to colors.coolGray.

Xdm MDX compiler

We switch the MDX bundler from next-mdx-remote to mdx-bundler. This uses xdm under the hood uses the latest micromark 3 and remark, rehype libraries.

Warning: If you were using custom remark or rehype libraries, please upgrade to micromark 3 compatible ones. If you are upgrading, please delete node_modules and package-lock.json to avoid having past dependencies related issues.

xdm contains multiple improvements over @mdx-js/mdx, the compiler used internally by next-mdx-remote, but there might be some breaking behaviour changes. Please check your markdown output to verify.

Some new possibilities include loading components directly in the mdx file using the import syntax and including js code which could be compiled at the build step.

For example, the following jsx snippet can be used directly in an MDX file to render the page title component:

import PageTitle from './PageTitle.js'
;<PageTitle> Using JSX components in MDX </PageTitle>

Using JSX components in MDX

The default configuration resolves all components relative to the components directory.

Note: Components which require external image loaders would require additional esbuild configuration. Components which are dependent on global application state on lifecycle like the Nextjs Link component would also not work with this setup as each mdx file is built indepedently. For such cases, it is better to use component substitution.

Layouts

You can map mdx blog content to layout components by configuring the frontmatter field. For example, this post is written with the new PostSimple layout!

Adding new templates

layout templates are stored in the ./layouts folder. You can add add your React components that you want to map to markdown content in this folder. The component file name must match that specified in the markdown frontmatter layout field.

The only required field is children which contains the rendered MDX content, though you would probably want to pass in the frontMatter contents and render it in the template.

You can configure the template to take in other fields - see PostLayout component for an example.

Here's an example layout which you can further customise:

export default function ExampleLayout({ frontMatter, children }) {
  const { date, title } = frontMatter

  return (
    <SectionContainer>
      <div>{date}</div>
      <h1>{title}</h1>
      <div>{children}</div>
    </SectionContainer>
  )
}

Configuring a blog post frontmatter

Use the layout frontmatter field to specify the template you want to map the markdown post to. Here's how the frontmatter of this post looks like:

---
title: 'New features in v1'
date: '2021-05-26   '
tags: ['next-js', 'tailwind', 'guide']
draft: false
summary: 'Introducing the new layout features - you can map mdx blog content to layout components by configuring the frontmatter field'
layout: PostSimple
---

You can configure the default layout in the respective page section by modifying the DEFAULT_LAYOUT variable. The DEFAULT_LAYOUT for blog posts page is set to PostLayout.

Extend

layout is mapped to wrapper which wraps the entire MDX content.

export const MDXComponents = {
  Image,
  a: CustomLink,
  pre: Pre,
  wrapper: ({ components, layout, ...rest }) => {
    const Layout = require(`../layouts/${layout}`).default
    return <Layout {...rest} />
  },
}

export const MDXLayoutRenderer = ({ layout, mdxSource, ...rest }) => {
  const MDXLayout = useMemo(() => getMDXComponent(mdxSource), [mdxSource])

  return <MDXLayout layout={layout} components={MDXComponents} {...rest} />
}

Use the MDXLayoutRenderer component in a page where you want to accept a layout name to map to the desired layout. You need to pass the layout name from the layout folder (it has to be an exact match).

Analytics

The template now supports plausible, simple analytics and google analytics. Configure siteMetadata.js with the settings that correpond with the desired analytics provider.

analytics: {
    // supports plausible, simpleAnalytics or googleAnalytics
    plausibleDataDomain: '', // e.g. tailwind-nextjs-starter-blog.vercel.app
    simpleAnalytics: false, // true or false
    googleAnalyticsId: '', // e.g. UA-000000-2 or G-XXXXXXX
  },

Custom events are also supported. You can import the logEvent function from @components/analytics/[ANALYTICS-PROVIDER] file and call it when triggering certain events of interest. Note: Additional configuration might be required depending on the analytics provider, please check their official documentation for more information.

Blog comments system

We have also added support for giscus, utterances or disqus. To enable, simply configure siteMetadata.js comments property with the desired provider and settings as specified in the config file.

comment: {
    // Select a provider and use the environment variables associated to it
    // https://vercel.com/docs/environment-variables
    provider: 'giscus', // supported providers: giscus, utterances, disqus
    giscusConfig: {
      // Visit the link below, and follow the steps in the 'configuration' section
      // https://giscus.app/
      repo: process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_GISCUS_REPO,
      repositoryId: process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_GISCUS_REPOSITORY_ID,
      category: process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_GISCUS_CATEGORY,
      categoryId: process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_GISCUS_CATEGORY_ID,
      mapping: 'pathname', // supported options: pathname, url, title
      reactions: '1', // Emoji reactions: 1 = enable / 0 = disable
      // Send discussion metadata periodically to the parent window: 1 = enable / 0 = disable
      metadata: '0',
      // theme example: light, dark, dark_dimmed, dark_high_contrast
      // transparent_dark, preferred_color_scheme, custom
      theme: 'light',
      // theme when dark mode
      darkTheme: 'transparent_dark',
      // If the theme option above is set to 'custom`
      // please provide a link below to your custom theme css file.
      // example: https://giscus.app/themes/custom_example.css
      themeURL: '',
    },
    utterancesConfig: {
      // Visit the link below, and follow the steps in the 'configuration' section
      // https://utteranc.es/
      repo: process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_UTTERANCES_REPO,
      issueTerm: '', // supported options: pathname, url, title
      label: '', // label (optional): Comment 💬
      // theme example: github-light, github-dark, preferred-color-scheme
      // github-dark-orange, icy-dark, dark-blue, photon-dark, boxy-light
      theme: '',
      // theme when dark mode
      darkTheme: '',
    },
    disqus: {
      // https://help.disqus.com/en/articles/1717111-what-s-a-shortname
      shortname: process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_DISQUS_SHORTNAME,
    },
  },

Multiple authors

Information on authors is now split from siteMetadata.js and stored in its own data/authors folder as a markdown file. Minimally, you will need to have a default.md file with authorship information. You can create additional files as required and the file name will be used as the reference to the author.

Here's how an author markdown file might looks like:

default.md

---
name: Tails Azimuth
avatar: /static/images/avatar.png
occupation: Professor of Atmospheric Science
company: Stanford University
email: address@yoursite.com
twitter: https://twitter.com/Twitter
linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com
github: https://github.com
---

A long description of yourself...

You can use this information in multiple places across the template. For example in the about section of the page, we grab the default author information with this line of code:

const authorDetails = await getFileBySlug('authors', ['default'])

This is rendered in the AuthorLayout template.

Multiple authors in blog post

The frontmatter of a blog post accepts an optional authors arrray field. If no field is specified, it is assumed that the default author is used. Simply pass in an array of authors to render multiple authors associated with post.

For example, the following frontmatter will display the authors given by data/authors/default.md and data/authors/sparrowhawk.md

title: 'My first post'
date: '2021-01-12'
draft: false
summary: 'My first post'
authors: ['default', 'sparrowhawk']

A demo of a multiple author post is shown in the Introducing Tailwind Nextjs Starter Blog post.

Copy button for code blocks

Hover over a code block and you will notice a Github inspired copy button! You can modify ./components/Pre.js to further customise it. The component is passed to MDXComponents and modifies all <pre> blocks.

Line highlighting and line numbers

Line highlighting and line numbers is now supported out of the box thanks to the new rehype-prism-plus plugin

The following javascript code block:

```js {1, 3-4} showLineNumbers
var num1, num2, sum
num1 = prompt('Enter first number')
num2 = prompt('Enter second number')
sum = parseInt(num1) + parseInt(num2) // "+" means "add"
alert('Sum = ' + sum) // "+" means combine into a string
```

will appear as:

var num1, num2, sum
num1 = prompt('Enter first number')
num2 = prompt('Enter second number')
sum = parseInt(num1) + parseInt(num2) // "+" means "add"
alert('Sum = ' + sum) // "+" means combine into a string

To modify the styles, change the following class selectors in the tailwind.css file:

.code-line {
  @apply pl-4 -mx-4 border-l-4 border-gray-800;
}

.highlight-line {
  @apply -mx-4 bg-gray-700 bg-opacity-50 border-l-4 border-primary-500;
}

.line-number::before {
  @apply pr-4 -ml-2 text-gray-400;
  content: attr(line);
}

Upgrade guide

There are significant portions of the code that has been changed from v0 to v1 including support for layouts and a new mdx engine.

There's also no real reason to change if the previous one serves your needs and it might be easier to copy the component changes you are interested to your existing blog rather than migrating everything over.

Nonetheless if you want to do so and have not changed much of the template, you could clone the new version and copy over the blog post instead.

Another alternative would be to pull the latest tempate version with the following code:

git remote add template git@github.com:timlrx/tailwind-nextjs-starter-blog.git
git pull template v1 --allow-unrelated-histories
rm -rf node_modules

You can see an example of such a migration in this commit for my personal blog.

v1 also uses feed.xml rather than index.xml. If you are migrating you should add a redirect to next.config.js like so:

async redirects() {
  return [
    {
      source: '/:path/index.xml',
      destination: '/:path/feed.xml',
      permanent: true,
    }
  ]
}