⚡️ Wanna Build a Blog Fast? Next.js + MDX + Velite to the Rescue

Redesigned my site recently and kicked it off with a hardcoded first blog — just to get the ball rolling. But writing every new post by editing code? Yeah, no thanks 🙃.

I wanted to keep it simple, developer-friendly, and fun. Markdown felt like the obvious choice — I use it all the time, it’s flexible, powerful, and doesn’t fight back. But I needed a way to properly type it and render everything into my Next.js app without duct-taping things together.

Could I build something custom? Sure. Should I? Nope 🚫.

First stop: Contentlayer. Looked promising, but turns out it’s not really maintained anymore 🫠. That’s when I stumbled on Velite — a slick, framework-agnostic library built just for this.

Good ol’ Markdown stays the same — nothing new to learn there. I just followed this guide to integrate Velite into my Next.js setup, and it all just worked ⚡️. Fast and clean.

This isn’t a step-by-step tutorial — Velite’s docs already have that covered. I’m just sharing the ride. If you’re building a personal blog or something similar, this combo’s worth a shot 🚀.

Originally published at https://ajaysivan.com on May 26, 2025.