Next JS GitHub Pages Best Practices and Tips

To get the most out of Next JS on GitHub Pages, it's essential to understand the limitations of GitHub Pages. GitHub Pages only supports static site generation, which means you can't use server-side rendering or get real-time data updates.

Here are some key considerations to keep in mind: GitHub Pages has a file size limit of 100MB, and your site must be served over HTTPS. Additionally, GitHub Pages only supports a limited set of HTTP headers, which can impact your site's SEO and performance.

When working with Next JS on GitHub Pages, it's crucial to use the `getStaticProps` method to fetch data at build time, rather than relying on server-side rendering or real-time data updates. This approach ensures that your site remains static and can be served by GitHub Pages.

By following these best practices, you can create fast, secure, and SEO-friendly sites with Next JS on GitHub Pages.

Troubleshooting is a crucial step in setting up your Next.js GitHub Pages project. If your project isn't building correctly, check if the `next.config.js` file is correctly configured.

Make sure you've installed the necessary dependencies, including `next` and `github-pages`. If you've missed this step, install them using npm or yarn.

Verify that your project's `package.json` file has a `homepage` field set to `https://username.github.io/repo-name`. This field is essential for GitHub Pages to work correctly.

Check your project's directory structure to ensure it matches the recommended setup, with a `public` directory containing your static assets.

To handle .mdx files in Next.js, you'll need to install necessary plugins, including @next/mdx, gray-matter, and next-mdx-remote.

You can configure MDX in the next.config.js file by adding the necessary code to treat .md or .mdx files as pages.

Next.js only looks for .js or .jsx files, so you'll need to configure it to treat .mdx files as pages.

To display .mdx files as individual webpages, you'll need to export content from the posts directory to the pages folder.

You can dynamically serve pages by fetching .mdx files and provide routing inside the pages directory with dynamic pages.

Create a blog folder inside the pages folder and add a file with the name [id].js, which is a dynamic route in Next.js.

To serve markdown files as webpages, you'll need to provide all dynamic paths you want to serve through the getStaticPaths function.

With serialize and MDXRemote, you can parse markdown content to an HTML string and render it as plain HTML.

You can style the HTML tags in markdown by passing custom tags as components to the MDX loader, which maps tags automatically.

Customizing tags like h1 and p as components can be done by passing them to the MDX loader.

Image optimization is crucial for Next.js on GitHub Pages. Images take a lot of space in a webpage, reducing page loading time and performance, especially for users with poor internet connections.

To optimize images, we use the next-optimized-images plugin, which provides options to convert PNG/JPEG files to Webp/JPEG2000 format and enable responsive images for different screen dimensions. This plugin can be installed and configured to export optimized images to a custom folder.

To manage CSS, assets, and page links, we need to configure the base path and asset prefix in next.config.js. This ensures that static assets and routing work properly, even when hosting the website at a subpath.

You might encounter issues with missing images if your project is published under a sub-path on GitHub Pages.

By default, Next.js maps all static assets to the domain, which can lead to issues with missing images and styles.

To fix this, you can set up a path prefix by adding basePath inside the next.config.js file.

In the case of GitHub Pages, this means setting the path prefix to the sub-path where your project is hosted.

For example, if your project is called 2048-in-react and is hosted at user.github.io/2048-in-react, you would set the basePath to /2048-in-react.

Remember to include the leading slash (/) at the beginning of the project directory.

This will ensure that your static assets are resolved correctly, and your images will appear as expected.

Image Optimization is crucial for webpage performance, especially for users with poor internet connections. Images can take up a lot of space, slowing down page loading times.

You can optimize images by converting PNG/JPEG files to Webp/JPEG2000 format, using responsive images for different screen dimensions, and implementing lazy loading. Next.js provides the next/image API for image optimization, but it requires a node server, which isn't possible for static site generation.

That's where the next-optimized-images plugin comes in, offering many options to optimize images. To use it, install next-optimized-images and some additional plugins to convert PNG/JPEG to Webp format and load Webp images.

In build time, next-optimized-images exports optimized images to a custom folder inside out/_next/static. You'll need to create an images directory at the root level and move images that need optimization to this folder, providing relative paths instead of relying on the public folder.

This setup will convert PNG images to Webp format and load Webp images, automatically falling back to the normal PNG image if the browser doesn't support Webp.

To fix CSS and other assets, you can make a simple change to your next.config.js file. Add an assetPrefix with the value of your GitHub pages subpath, including a forward slash at either side.

This change will allow you to push the change to GitHub pages and see the page layout you expect. For example, if your subpath is /blog/, you can add it to the assetPrefix like this: assetPrefix: '/blog/'.

In Next.js, the basePath specifies the base path of the application to manage linking pages. If you're hosting on GitHub pages, the base path /blog/ resolves to username.github.io/blog/, where / is the home path.

You can recreate the issue locally by running next export and then using serve to serve the parent directory of your output directory. For example, if your output directory is /wallisconsultancy/out, you can run serve wallisconsultancy.

Here's a summary of the key settings to optimize CSS and assets:

By making these simple changes, you can ensure that your CSS and assets are properly linked and styled on your GitHub pages site.

To deploy your Next.js app to GitHub Pages, you'll need to generate static files. You can do this by using the static-site-generator of Next.js to generate all pre-rendered pages bundled inside the out directory.

To host your site, use the out directory, which contains all dynamic pages pre-rendered and ready to serve as HTML pages on the client-side. This folder will be used to host your website on GitHub Pages.

First, you need to change the build output. By default, Next.js uses Node.js to run the application, which is incompatible with GitHub Pages. So, you'll need to enable static page generation in Next.js.

To do this, you'll change the output mode to export inside next.config.js. This will generate an out folder containing static assets for your app after running next build.

The Pages are published under a sub-path of a domain and takes the project name as a sub-path. For example, a URL might look something like this: projectname.github.io/projectname.

Next.js offers several features that make it an ideal choice for web development projects. One of the key features is assetPrefix, which allows developers to prefix CSS styling and other assets such as images.

This feature is particularly useful when working with Next.js and GitHub, as it enables developers to manage version control and track changes in their codebase using GitHub's robust features. Next.js also supports server-side rendering and static site generation, which can be efficiently deployed through GitHub Pages or other CI/CD pipelines linked to GitHub repositories.

By leveraging Next.js's capabilities, developers can create highly performant and SEO-friendly applications that are easily deployable and maintainable.

Navigation from Home is a crucial aspect of any website, and Next.js makes it a breeze.

You can navigate from the Home page to blog posts by clicking on the title of the post, thanks to the next/link component that takes care of dynamic routing from any page to another.

If you want to manually pre-pend the base URL, you'll need to navigate like this: http://localhost:3000/blog/batman-vs-superman.

To make this work, you'll need to change pages/index.js to get dynamic navigation.

Next.js Export is a powerful feature that allows you to export your app to static HTML, which can be run standalone without a Node.js server.

You can generate the HTML into an out directory, where you can use tools like serve to run your app. This makes it easy to test and deploy your site.

To export your app, use the next export command, which will create the necessary files in the out directory.

From there, you can use the static-site-generator of Next.js to generate all pre-rendered pages bundled inside the out directory. This is especially useful when hosting your site on a platform like Github pages.

By exporting your app to static HTML, you can take advantage of faster page loads and improved SEO.

Next.js is an amazing framework for building server-rendered React applications. It simplifies the process of building and deploying websites, offering features like static site generation and API routes.

One of the key benefits of Next.js is its ability to export your app to static HTML, which can be run standalone without the need for a Node.js server. This is done using the next export feature, which generates HTML into an out directory.

Next.js also provides a way to prefix assets like CSS and images using the assetPrefix feature. This is especially useful when you need to fix CSS styling and other assets.

Another powerful feature of Next.js is its ability to fetch dynamic data and provide it to components before rendering. This is done using the getStaticProps function, which allows you to fetch any dynamic data to provide before rendering the component.

If you want to navigate from the Home page to blog posts by clicking on the title of the post, Next.js provides a next/link component that takes care of dynamic routing. This is a great way to create a seamless user experience.

To deploy your website, Next.js provides a static-site-generator that generates all pre-rendered pages bundled inside the out directory. This makes it easy to host your website on platforms like GitHub Pages.

Next.js also has a strong connection to GitHub, with its official repository hosted on GitHub. This allows developers to access the source code, contribute to the project, and collaborate on features.

One of the advantages of using Next.js with GitHub is streamlined collaboration through version control. This makes it easy to manage changes and track updates in your codebase.

Advanced applications of Next.js in conjunction with GitHub can significantly enhance the development workflow for modern web applications. By leveraging Next.js's server-side rendering and static site generation capabilities, developers can create highly performant and SEO-friendly applications.

Vercel, the maker of Next.js, offers a lot of services and capabilities, including automatic Git integration, analytics, and incremental static regeneration. This makes it a great option for hosting Next.js websites.