I Just Wanted to Write Blogs - Not Trigger a Full Rebuild Every Time

Problem

All I wanted was to write my notes and blogs - a lot of them.
But every time I pushed a post, my site:

• Rebuilt the entire app
• Hit Vercel’s build limit
• And sometimes... just broke 💀

So I did what any dev would do:
Over-engineer a solution that’s cooler than necessary.

Enter: The Two-Repo Setup

I split my site into two worlds:

One for content
One for the portfolio code

Why? Because:

• I didn’t want a CMS
• I wanted Git versioning for my notes
• And I didn’t want to rebuild the site for every typo fix

The Sync Flow

Here's how it works:

1. I write .mdx posts in a separate content repo
2. A GitHub Action:
   • Copies the new posts into the deployed site repo
   • Pushes them into a folder (synced-content/)
   • Tells the site: "Yo, revalidate just this one path"

No full rebuilds.
No heavy CMS.
Instant content updates.

🤓 It Gets Nerdier

• Dynamic imports to keep initial loads fast
• GitHub API as a fallback for cold fetches
• Memory cache to avoid spamming API calls
• SEO setup + sitemap + robots.txt (because I want Google to love me)

Why This Works So Well

• Free on GitHub + Vercel
• Pure .mdx — no weird database schemas
• Git = full content history (typos included 😅)
• Looks and feels way more powerful than it is

What I Learned

• GitHub Actions are stupidly powerful
• ISR is magic, when you don’t abuse it
• Avoiding rebuilds saves so much time
• I still like writing Markdown way more than opening Notion

Final Thoughts

This isn't just about blogs.
This is about developer ownership - building things that feel yours.

If you're tired of rebuilding or paying for CMSs you barely use:
Use Git. Use ISR. Geek out.