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To build a complete web application with React from scratch, there are many important details you need to consider:

• Code has to be bundled using a bundler like webpack and transformed using a compiler like Babel.
• You need to do production optimizations such as code splitting.
• You might want to statically pre-render some pages for performance and SEO. You might also want to use server-side rendering or client-side rendering.
• You might have to write some server-side code to connect your React app to your data store.

A framework can solve these problems. But such a framework must have the right level of abstraction — otherwise it won’t be very useful. It also needs to have great "Developer Experience", ensuring you and your team have an amazing experience while writing code.

Next.js: The React Framework

Enter Next.js, the React Framework. Next.js provides a solution to all of the above problems. But more importantly, it puts you and your team in the pit of success when building React applications.

Next.js aims to have best-in-class developer experience and many built-in features, such as:

• An intuitive page-based routing system (with support for dynamic routes)
• Pre-rendering, both static generation (SSG) and server-side rendering (SSR) are supported on a per-page basis
• Automatic code splitting for faster page loads
• Client-side routing with optimized prefetching
• Built-in CSS and Sass support, and support for any CSS-in-JS library
• Development environment with Fast Refresh support
• API routes to build API endpoints with Serverless Functions
• Fully extendable

Next.js is used in tens of thousands of production-facing websites and web applications, including many of the world's largest brands.

About This Tutorial

This free interactive course will guide you through how to get started with Next.js.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn Next.js basics by creating a very simple blog app. Here’s an example of the final result:

https://next-learn-starter.vercel.app (source)

This tutorial assumes basic knowledge of JavaScript and React. If you’ve never written React code, you should go through the official React tutorial first.

If you’re looking for documentation instead, visit the Next.js documentation.

Join the Conversation

If you have questions about anything related to Next.js or this course, you're welcome to ask our community on Discord.

Let’s get started!