A statically generated blog example using Next.js and Sanity

This starter is a statically generated blog that uses Next.js App Router for the frontend and Sanity to handle its content. It comes with a native Sanity Studio that offers features like real-time collaboration and visual editing with live updates using Presentation.

The Studio connects to Sanity Content Lake, which gives you hosted content APIs with a flexible query language, on-demand image transformations, powerful patching, and more. You can use this starter to kick-start a blog or learn these technologies.

Features

• A performant, static blog with editable posts, authors, and site settings
• TypeScript setup with Sanity TypeGen
• A native and customizable authoring environment, accessible on yourblog.com/studio
• Real-time and collaborative content editing with fine-grained revision history
• Side-by-side instant content preview that works across your whole site
• Support for block content and the most advanced custom fields capability in the industry
• Incremental Static Revalidation; no need to wait for a rebuild to publish new content
• Unsplash integration setup for easy media management
• Sanity AI Assist preconfigured for image alt text generation
• Out of the box support for Vercel Visual Editing.

Demo

https://next-blog.sanity.build

Deploy your own

Use the Deploy Button below, you'll deploy the example using Vercel as well as connect it to your Sanity dataset using the Sanity Vercel Integration.

How to use

Execute create-next-app with npm, Yarn, or pnpm to bootstrap the example:

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npx create-next-app --example cms-sanity next-sanity-blog

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yarn create next-app --example cms-sanity next-sanity-blog

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pnpm create next-app --example cms-sanity next-sanity-blog

Whenever you edit a GROQ query you update the TypeScript types by running:

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npm run typegen

Configuration

• Step 1. Set up the environment
  • Reuse remote environment variables
  • Using the Sanity CLI
    • Creating a read token
• Step 2. Run Next.js locally in development mode
• Step 3. Populate content
• Step 4. Deploy to production
• Next steps

Step 1. Set up the environment

Reuse remote environment variables

If you started with deploying your own then you can run this to reuse the environment variables from the Vercel project and skip to the next step:

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npx vercel link
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npx vercel env pull

Using the Sanity CLI

Copy the .env.local.example file to .env.local to get started:

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cp -i .env.local.example .env.local

Run the setup command to get setup with a Sanity project, dataset and their relevant environment variables:

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npm run setup

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yarn setup

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pnpm run setup

You'll be asked multiple questions, here's a sample output of what you can expect:

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Need to install the following packages:
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sanity@3.30.1
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Ok to proceed? (y) y
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You're setting up a new project!
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We'll make sure you have an account with Sanity.io.
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Press ctrl + C at any time to quit.
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Prefer web interfaces to terminals?
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You can also set up best practice Sanity projects with
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your favorite frontends on https://www.sanity.io/templates
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Looks like you already have a Sanity-account. Sweet!
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✔ Fetching existing projects
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? Select project to use Templates [r0z1eifg]
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? Select dataset to use blog-vercel
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? Would you like to add configuration files for a Sanity project in this Next.js folder? No
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Detected framework Next.js, using prefix 'NEXT_PUBLIC_'
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Found existing NEXT_PUBLIC_SANITY_PROJECT_ID, replacing value.
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Found existing NEXT_PUBLIC_SANITY_DATASET, replacing value.

It's important that when you're asked Would you like to add configuration files for a Sanity project in this Next.js folder? that you answer No as this example is already setup with the required configuration files.

Creating a read token

This far your .env.local file should have values for NEXT_PUBLIC_SANITY_PROJECT_ID and NEXT_PUBLIC_SANITY_DATASET. Before you can run the project you need to setup a read token (SANITY_API_READ_TOKEN), it's used for authentication when Sanity Studio is live previewing your application.

1. Go to manage.sanity.io and select your project.
2. Click on the 🔌 API tab.
3. Click on + Add API token.
4. Name it "next blog live preview read token" and set Permissions to Viewer and hit Save.
5. Copy the token and add it to your .env.local file.

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SANITY_API_READ_TOKEN="<paste your token here>"

Your .env.local file should look something like this:

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NEXT_PUBLIC_SANITY_PROJECT_ID="r0z1eifg"
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NEXT_PUBLIC_SANITY_DATASET="blog-vercel"
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SANITY_API_READ_TOKEN="sk..."

[!CAUTION] Make sure to add .env.local to your .gitignore file so you don't accidentally commit it to your repository.

Step 2. Run Next.js locally in development mode

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npm install && npm run dev

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yarn install && yarn dev

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pnpm install && pnpm dev

Your blog should be up and running on http://localhost:3000! If it doesn't work, post on GitHub discussions.

Step 3. Populate content

Open your Sanity Studio that should be running on http://localhost:3000/studio.

By default you're taken to the Presentation tool, which has a preview of the blog on the left hand side, and a list of documents on the right hand side.

We're all set to do some content creation!

• Click on the "+ Create" button top left and select Post

• Type some dummy data for the Title

• Generate a Slug

• Fill in Content with some dummy text

  If you've enabled AI Assist you click on the sparkles ✨ button and generate a draft based on your title and then on Generate sample content.

• Summarize the Content in the Excerpt field

  If you've enabled AI Assist you click on the sparkles ✨ button and then on Generate sample content.

• Select a Cover Image from Unsplash.

• Customize the blog name, description and more.

[!IMPORTANT] For each post record, you need to click Publish after saving for it to be visible outside Draft Mode. In production new content is using Time-based Revalidation, which means it may take up to 1 minute before changes show up. Since a stale-while-revalidate pattern is used you may need to refresh a couple of times to see the changes.

Step 4. Deploy to production

[!NOTE] If you already deployed with Vercel earlier you can skip this step.

To deploy your local project to Vercel, push it to GitHub/GitLab/Bitbucket and import to Vercel.

[!IMPORTANT] When you import your project on Vercel, make sure to click on Environment Variables and set them to match your .env.local file.

After it's deployed link your local code to the Vercel project:

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npx vercel link

[!TIP] In production you can exit Draft Mode by clicking on "Back to published" at the top. On Preview deployments you can toggle Draft Mode in the Vercel Toolbar.

Next steps

• Join the Sanity community

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