Blog ✍️

I share anything that may help others, technologies I'm using and cool things I've made.

Using Composite GitHub Actions to make your Workflows smaller and more reusable

8th December 2021-github, productivity, devops

Composite Actions can be used to make GitHub Workflows smaller and more reusable. Find out what they are and how they work.

Animating Next.js page transitions with Framer Motion

5th July 2021-nextjs, react, webdev, showdev

Bring your Next.js app to life by adding page transition animations with Framer Motion.

I made a free Dev.to Writing Streak Calculator using Next.js, Day.js and the Dev.to API

13th April 2021-productivity, showdev, javascript, react

Do you wonder what your current weekly posting streak is? I made a tool that will tell you! All you need to do is enter your Dev.to username.

I built an advanced Dev.to dashboard with historic data using Next.js and Azure Functions 📈

6th April 2021-showdev, javascript, react, beginners

Do you ever watch your view count rise and wonder which posts are being read the most? I know I did....

Using TypeScript Project References to share common code

30th March 2021-javascript, typescript, beginners

Ever wondered if you can share interfaces, types and functions between TypeScript projects? I'm curr...

Using getStaticProps and getStaticPaths with TypeScript - Next.js

24th March 2021-nextjs, react, javascript, beginners

My personal website is built on Next.js and uses both the getStaticProps and getStaticPaths functions...

The easiest way to download SVGs from a website

23rd March 2021-beginners, webdev, tutorial, todayilearned

Usually, when adding icons to a website, I'll use React-icons. There are times, however, when I prefe...

50,000 views milestone, continuing my blogging journey

16th March 2021-devjournal, yearinreview, writing, gratitude

🎉 Last week I hit 50,000 total views! 🎉 🔥 And also 1000 total reactions! 🔥 🚀 And was awarded the Ne...

How to add a blog using Dev.to as a CMS to a Next.js website

10th March 2021-showdev, javascript, react, nextjs

For a shorter introduction (about half the length) check out "I completely rewrote my personal websi...

Different ways to fetch data in Next.js (server-side) and when to use them

2nd March 2021-nextjs, react, javascript, webdev

When building an application powered by Next.js it's probable that you'll need to fetch data from eit...

5 APIs to use in your next project

23rd February 2021-webdev, beginners, api

Being a developer is great - you can build almost anything you want! Sometimes, however, it's difficu...

5 places to get pre-crafted Tailwind CSS components for free

10th February 2021-react, css, tailwindcss

One of my favourite reasons to use Tailwind CSS is the vast amount of premade components available - for free. I've made a list of the best places to find them.

I completely rewrote my personal website using Dev.to as a CMS

3rd February 2021-showdev, javascript, react, nextjs

I spent a weekend rebuilding my website from scratch using TypeScript, Next.js, Tailwind CSS and Dev.to as a CMS for my blog and portfolio pages.

5 built-in Next.js features you absolutely should check out

26th January 2021-webdev, javascript, nextjs, react

When you start to use Next.js, it’s easy to overlook some incredible built-in features such as exporting as a static app and Incremental Static Regeneration

How to use Socket.io with Next.js, Express and TypeScript (ES6 import instead of require statements)

14th January 2021-javascript, tutorial, nextjs, typescript

I'm currently working on a TypeScript project that is using Socket.io to communicate between a Next.j...

20,000 views milestone, what I've learnt about blogging so far

13th January 2021-writing, devjournal, gratitude, yearinreview

🎉 Last week I hit 20,000 total views! 🎉 When I posted my first article on dev.to last July (2020) I...

Deploying a Next.js project on Vercel in less than three minutes - with a custom domain

10th January 2021-nextjs, javascript, tutorial, react

My personal website, wallis.dev, used to be hosted in a Docker container on a Digital Ocean droplet t...

Quickly adding Google Analytics to Next.js with FAQs

30th December 2020-tutorial, react, javascript, nextjs

This article not only demonstrates how to add Google Analytics to a Next.js app but also explains what you're actually doing.

What I learnt using TDD for Advent of Code (2020)

23rd December 2020-adventofcode, tdd, go, devjournal

2020 hasn't been great for anyone, but it has gifted me the ability to work from home and reduced my...

Ensuring your OpenAPI (Swagger) Specification is never outdated through testing with Chai or Jest

3rd November 2020-javascript, testing, webdev, node

Testing your OpenAPI Specification using Chai OpenAPI response validator or Jest OpenAPI. Additional...

Next.js and GitHub Pages, how the basePath and assetPrefix configuration options will fix your website

13th August 2020-react, javascript, nextjs, webdev

tl;dr: When hosting a Next.js project on GitHub Pages (without a custom domain name) your internal li...