Build and ship a production Next.js app

  1. Orient to the 4-week build path
    10 min

    Building and shipping a production Next.js app touches five areas that usually feel like separate projects: scaffolding, routing, a database, authentication, and deployment. This guide sequences them so each phase builds on a working result from the last one, instead of a half-finished app in five directions at once.

    Assumed going in: comfortable with React and TypeScript, comfortable in a terminal, and a GitHub account you can create a repository under.

    What ships each week, part-time:

    1. Week 1Scaffold the app, build routes, layouts, loading and error states.
    2. Week 2Provision a database, wire schema, reads, writes and caching.
    3. Week 3Add authentication: login, protected routes, session data.
    4. Week 4Harden the build, deploy to Vercel, add a custom domain.
    Four weeks of part-time work, in dependency order — each week's work assumes the previous week's is live.

    To do

    • Node.js installable, a terminal, a GitHub account, and roughly 4 weeks of part-time time before starting.