Hello, I am an amateur web developer, or more precisely, self-taught. I’ve learned several programming languages to a certain extent, and I’m capable of solving fairly complex tasks and challenges. It started as a hobby, but recently, I’ve delved deeper into it.
Now I’m building my own AI Blog. I’ve decided to share my knowledge with you, showing how things are done and providing everything with code examples.
After following this guide, you’ll have half the work done for your own blog. I’ll share the continuation in the next article, enabling you to fully set up your blog.
This is a very simple and detailed guide on how to connect a Next.js app to Contentful’s CMS, allowing you to create a news website or your own blog.
This guide is truly practical, as it’s written and tested using the most up-to-date methods.
Step 1: Register on Contentful
First, you need to register on the Contentful website and create an account.
Once you’re logged in, go to Content Model and create a new Content Type (name it in lowercase, e.g., myblogs).
Since this guide is focused on creating a blog, let’s proceed with that example.
What does a blog need? At minimum, a title, description, publication date, and slug. It may require additional fields, but let’s stick with these for now.
Above on image example is from my blogs contenteful account, I have some extra fields.
Accordingly, you need to create fields in the Content Type for these properties. As you try adding fields, you’ll figure out which types of fields you need. Don’t rush—experiment, modify, and play around. There’s no problem if you make a mistake. Just remember to add the fields you’ll need and ensure they are relevant.
Once you’re done adding the fields, go to Content, create a few entries (articles) to test with, and publish them.
At this point, Step 1 is complete. You’ve created the minimal infrastructure necessary for a blog. Now, it’s time to connect it to your Next.js app so it becomes accessible and visually readable to others.
Step 2: Create an API Token
The next step is to create an API token, so your front-end application can access the blog API and fetch the articles.
Connecting Contentful to a Next.js App
To display the articles you’ve added to Contentful in your Next.js web app, you need to connect your project’s endpoints to the Next.js application.
1. Create a Next.js App
First, create a new Next.js app by running:
npx create-next-app@latest my-blog
2. Then install Contentful in your Next.js
npm install contentful
3. Set Up Contentful Integration
Next, create the following file:
/lib/contentful.js
Add the following code to the file:
// lib/contentful.js
import { createClient } from "contentful";
export const client = createClient({
space: process.env.CONTENTFUL_SPACE_ID,
accessToken: process.env.CONTENTFUL_ACCESS_TOKEN,
});
4. Configure Environment Variables
Create a .env.local file in the root of your project. This file will store your Space ID and Access Token securely. It should look like this:
Click on the Open code sample and the you see your Space ID and Access Token.
`CONTENTFUL_SPACE_ID=your-space-id
CONTENTFUL_ACCESS_TOKEN=your-access-token`
Replace your-space-ID and your-access-token with the corresponding values from your Contentful account.
By following these steps, you’ll have the foundation ready for displaying your Contentful articles in your Next.js application. Stay tuned for the next article, where I’ll explain how to fully structure your blog and enhance it further.
In the next post I explain you how to fetch and display articles from your contentful API endpoint.
Top comments (0)