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Blog Posts README

How to Add a New Blog Post

How to Add a New Blog Post

1. Create a Markdown File

Create a new file in this directory with the naming convention:

blog_XXX.md
(e.g.,
blog_005.md
)

2. Add Frontmatter (Optional but Recommended)

Start your markdown file with YAML frontmatter to specify metadata:

---
date: 2024-03-14
author: CodeDD Team
featured: true
image: /path/to/cover-image.jpg
---

# Your Blog Post Title

## Your Subtitle

Your content here...

Available Frontmatter Fields:

  • date (recommended): Publication date in YYYY-MM-DD format. If not provided, file modification date will be used.
  • author (optional): Author name. Default: "CodeDD"
  • featured (optional): Set to
    true
    to feature this post. Default:
    false
  • title (optional): Override the title extracted from the first
    #
    heading
  • description (optional): Override the subtitle extracted from the first
    ##
    heading
  • image (optional): Path to cover image. Can also be set in
    blogPosts.js

3. Write Your Content

Use standard markdown formatting:

# Main Title (H1)

## Subtitle (H2)

### Section Heading (H3)

Regular paragraph text.

- Bullet point
- Another bullet point

**Bold text** and *italic text*

[Link text](https://example.com)

![Image alt text](/path/to/image.jpg)

4. Build Process

When you run

npm run build
, the following happens automatically:

  1. Pre-build: The

    generate-blog-routes.js
    script runs and:

    • Scans all
      .md
      files in this directory
    • Extracts titles and slugs
    • Generates routes for react-snap pre-rendering
    • Updates
      sitemap.xml
      with blog post URLs

  2. Build: React app is built with all blog posts

  3. Post-build: react-snap pre-renders all blog pages for SEO

5. No Additional Configuration Needed

The blog system automatically:

  • Generates URL-friendly slugs from titles
  • Creates routes in your React app
  • Updates the sitemap.xml
  • Pre-renders pages for search engines
  • Adds structured data (JSON-LD) for SEO
  • Sets canonical URLs

Example Blog Post Structure

---
date: 2024-06-15
author: John Doe
featured: false
---

# **Your Awesome Blog Post Title**

## **An engaging subtitle that summarizes the post**

### Introduction

Your introduction paragraph here...

### Main Section

More content here...

## Conclusion

Wrap up your post...

### FAQ

#### Question 1?

Answer here...

SEO Best Practices

  1. Use descriptive titles: Make your H1 heading clear and descriptive
  2. Write compelling subtitles: The H2 will be used as the meta description
  3. Add dates: Always include a
    date
    in frontmatter for accurate timestamps
  4. Use alt text: Add descriptive alt text to all images
  5. Internal linking: Link to other relevant blog posts when appropriate
  6. Keep URLs clean: Titles should be concise to generate clean URL slugs

Metadata Configuration

For additional metadata not in frontmatter, you can edit

blogPosts.js
:

export const blogMetadata = {
  'blog_005': {
    coverImage: '/images/blog/awesome-post.jpg',
    featured: true,
  }
};

Frontmatter takes precedence over

blogPosts.js
metadata.

Testing Your Blog Post Locally

  1. Run
    npm start
    to start the development server
  2. Navigate to
    /blog
    to see your post in the list
  3. Click on your post to view it
  4. Check that all metadata is correct in browser dev tools:
    • View Page Source to see meta tags
    • Look for JSON-LD structured data in the
      <head>

Production Deployment

Before deploying:

  1. Run
    npm run build
    to ensure everything compiles
  2. Check
    build/sitemap.xml
    to verify your post is included
  3. Verify pre-rendered HTML includes your content (check
    build/blog/your-slug/index.html
    )

Common Issues

Q: My blog post isn't showing up

  • Ensure the file ends with
    .md
  • Check that it has a valid H1 heading (# Title)
  • Run
    npm run build
    to regenerate routes

Q: The date is wrong

  • Add
    date: YYYY-MM-DD
    to frontmatter
  • Dates from frontmatter override file modification dates

Q: SEO not working

  • Verify react-snap is running in postbuild
  • Check that your title and subtitle are extracting correctly
  • Use "View Page Source" (not inspect element) to see what search engines see