Nathan's site

Hosted on Vercel using Cosmic as a headless CMS

Set up environment variables

Go to the Settings menu at the sidebar and click Basic Settings.

Next, copy the .env.local.example file in this directory to .env.local (which will be ignored by Git):

cp .env.local.example .env.local

Then set each variable on .env.local:

• COSMIC_BUCKET_SLUG should be the Bucket slug key under Basic Settings.
• COSMIC_READ_KEY should be the Read Key under API Access.
• COSMIC_PREVIEW_SECRET can be any random string (but avoid spaces) - this is used for Preview Mode.

Your .env.local file should look like this:

COSMIC_BUCKET_SLUG=...
COSMIC_READ_KEY=...
COSMIC_PREVIEW_SECRET=...

Step 4. in development mode

yarn install
yarn dev

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

Step 5. Try preview mode

To add the ability to preview content from your Cosmic dashboard go to Posts > Edit Settings and scroll down to the "Preview Link" section. (Screenshot below)

Add your live URL or localhost development URL which includes your chosen preview secret and [object_slug] shortcode. It should look like the following:

http://localhost:3000/api/preview?secret=<secret>&slug=[object_slug]

• <secret> is the string you entered for COSMIC_PREVIEW_SECRET.
• [object_slug] shortcode will automatically be converted to the post's slug attribute.

On Cosmic, go to one of the posts you've created and:

• Update the title. For example, you can add [Draft] in front of the title.
• Click Save Draft, but DO NOT click Publish. By doing this, the post will be in the draft state.

Now, if you go to the post page directly on localhost, you won't see the updated title. However, if you use the Preview Mode, you'll be able to see the change (Documentation).

Next, click the Preview Link button on the Post to see the updated title. (Screenshot below)

To exit preview mode, you can click on Click here to exit preview mode at the top.

Step 6. Deploy on Vercel

You can deploy this app to the cloud with Vercel (Documentation).

Deploy Your Local Project

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.

Deploy from Our Template

Alternatively, you can deploy using our template by clicking on the Deploy button below.

Notes to future self

Content lives here https://app.cosmicjs.com/personal-site-production/dashboard?message=app-installed

Run e2e tests:

yarn dev
yarn cy:run

Task list

• Make git repo
• After initial commit, remove blog stuff for now
• Make simple homepage
• Push up to Github
• Deploy to Vercel
• Update domain hosting to point to Vercel
• Validate new site is working as expected
• Ensure it looks good on mobile
• Archive old site/repo
• Add 'Things I'm proud of' section
• Add animated circle the simulates scrolling down