MDNEXT is an ecosystem of tools to get your NextJS + MDX projects blasting off 🚀
Quick start 🚀
Looking to start a new project?
# Using NPX we'll start up the mdnext CLI prompts --
npx mdnext
# You will first be prompted with.. --
What is the name of your project?
# Then you will choose which template to use
Select which template to use ...Just want to access components in your MDX based apps?
# Even though we're a Next based ecosystem, our `MDX` components should be usable in most React based applications
yarn add @mdnext/components
or
npm i @mdnext/componentsWhat is MDNEXT? 🤔
mdnext is an ecosystem of tools to empower working with NextJS + MDX.
The mdnext CLI surfaces a collection officially maintained and community submitted templates to choose from. Once chosen, the project is cloned locally with a clean commit history and you're ready to build your next project.
@mdnext/components delivers accessible (thanks ChakraUI) and extendable components for working with MDX. These include things you've seen like Code components for styling code blocks or Iframes for embedding rich content to MDX
The mdnext template collection are NextJS based projects with opinions around how to style, handle MDX (and other data sources), deliver media, and handle your most usual workflows (ecomm / blogs / product pages). While there is an officially maintained collection of templates, I was excited to see and share what the community has created. I know there's many different opinions and comfortabilities as a web developer and want our ecosystem to be accessible.
Understanding MDNEXT 📓
The basic structure of the mdnext-starter can be seen throughout all other templates at it's core of how it utilizes MDX and Next.
Getting to know this structure will help inform you of the current best practices that are being followed (which are free to interpretation!) and easy enough to plug and play. Let's dive into the starter:
jsconfig.js
NextJS lets us configure absolute paths for our app. We use this to easily import all of our functions and utilities inside of our src directory
pages
The pages directory defines your routing. Lifecycle methods like getStaticProps / getStaticPaths / getServerProps are available at the page level. This is where we consume our MDX content as data to pass to our components.
*_app.js*NextJS allows you to override the App component, which is used to initialize pages. More here*_document.js*: Allows you to augment our application's<html>and<body>tags.all-data/index.js: This page is an example of displaying links to all of your individual MDX data pages. Here we usegetStaticPropsto feed the frontmatter of ourMDXfiles for our components.data/[slug].js: Here we utilize NextJS dynamic routing. By usinggetStaticPathswe're able to feed a dynamic slug, handling all of the logic once and applying it to eachMDXdata that we load. This allows us to then match to our data ingetStaticPropsand display that to the page and our components.index.js: Our page at the root of our app, lives inside of thepagesdirectoriesindex.js.
src
Our src directory holds all of our client code. Our components, custom hooks, utility functions, and our MDX files all live here, with the first three available for absolute path imports 👍
next.config.js
For custom configuration around things like environment variables, webpack, pageExtensions, and many more, you can utilize next.config.js
Each template will have it's own README with explicit documentation pertaining to the additions that make up the new configuration. Otherwise, you will find each template at it's core, starts similarly to mdnext-starter
Templates 🏗️
The templates inside of mdnext were made to alleviate the friction when starting a new website. Blogs, personal sites, client work, etc can always feel very daunting to get started on.
What do we have to accomplish?
How do we handle styling?
How am I going to handle data?
What's the best way to integrate authentication?
The opinions in these templates will get you started quickly and allow you to customize however you see fit.
Our currently maintained templates:
mdnext-starterThis is the least opinionated template, that all templates are created from. It houses very minimal configuration and opinion outside of an example of sourcingMDXinside ofgetStaticProps/Pathsmdnext-blogThe blog templates adds features on top of ourmdnext-starter. Specifically usingChakra-UIfor styling. Configuration for blogs posts at the page and content level using ourMDXfiles as routes.FuseJSfor filtering our blogs posts. Check this template out in action!mdnext-overlaysWhen becoming a new streamer you are met with many challenges. Eventually you're going to want to setup your own Scenes, animations, and interactions for your stream and it's viewers. Why not use the tools you love to create them? With this configuration you're set up with a base layer for configuring each new scene as a route. Each route contains ways to interact with Twitch API's, your Twitch chat, and information surrounding your stream and it's events!
Our community submitted templates:
mdnext-tailwindWant to get up and running quickly with aTailwind+mdnextproject? This is the answer. A proper config alongside a collection of resources to get those new toTailwindfeel comfortable!mdnext-twin-macroThis starter is configured withtwin.macroas it's choice of styling. This allows you to utilizeTailwind'sutility classes andemotion'scssmethod for one off styles.mdnext-graphcmsUtilizingGraphCMSas our datasource, we setup the basics for a blog. It starts you off with a simple example of how you can pull Markdown from GraphCMS and feed it to our UI with ourMDXmdnext-reflexjsReflexjs is a styling library built for speed and excellent developer experience. You can style your components using style props and constraints based on the System UI specifications.
Want to submit a new template? Head over to our Contributing section and check out mdnext-starter