According to my 2023 goals, my first task of the year was to convert my website to Remix and Tailwind. I completed the Tailwind conversion back in February, and the Remix conversion took me just over a month. Here's how it went.

🍰 conversion process

Converting from Next.js to Remix was pretty straightforward. I started by swapping out the next.config.js for a remix.config.js. Then I had to map the _app.tsx and _document.tsx files to the Remix equivalent root.tsx file.

Next I moved all of my pages into the routes folder and modified the structure slightly. All of the getStaticProps calls had to be converted to Remix loader functions, and I had to use the Remix meta function for SEO information. Then I swapped out the Next <Link> component for the Remix one.

Ultimately the pull request was only a four line difference if you don't count the package-lock.json file. Both frameworks were structured in a similar manner, but something about Remix felt simpler.

😖 issues

The project wasn't without issues though. The first problem I noticed was that sometimes page transitions weren't loading data correctly. That's because the loader functions must be exported inline, rather than at the bottom of the file.

export const loader = () => {}

The next issue I hit was a very weird one. Once deployed to Vercel, I was no longer able to read my local markdown files. After some deep searching, I found that referencing process.cwd() does not work the same in Remix as it does in Next.js when hosted on Vercel. The solution was to use __dirname to construct paths, so that they can be statically analyzed by the hosting platform.

const postsPath = `${__dirname}/../content/posts`

Another similar problem I ran into was with gatsby-remark-vscode causing build failures. Internally it looks for some other files in nearby directories, which were not in their expected locations because I had told Remix to bundle all server dependencies. Unfortunately I never found a solution to this problem.

But the last issue I ran into was enough to put a stop to the project. Because Remix is an SSR framework, I was sending API requests to fetch my latest YouTube videos on every page load, which depleted my quota and caused me to get rate limited for the rest of the day.

I investigated using cache headers on the request sent from the server and from the browser, but nothing seemed to have any effect. Instead of go further down the caching rabbit hole with something like Redis, or set up a cron job to pull my latest videos, I decided that it was too much infrastructure for a static site.

🏎️ performance

But regardless, I wanted to see how a fully server rended application performed when compared to my existing Next.js site.

Despite the fact that Next.js had many more network requests to fetch neighboring pages, it was faster in nearly every way! The loading experience was identical in both applications, with no noticable differences in layout shift or perceived loading time.

🎬 conclusion

Given the issues I ran into, it showed me that Remix isn't the right choice for a static blog. While the simplicity and developer experience is amazing, Remix really shines for authenticated web applications. That's why we're using it at Atlassian for our latest internal tools.

With that being said, I'm going to stick with Next.js for now. I'm still hosting on Vercel, and they go together like peanut butter and jelly. However, I'm still debating on how far I push into the Next.js ecosystem. I recently made an effort to remove the <Image> component from my codebase, as it locked me into using Next.js. But their new @next/font module is very enticing...

At the end of the day, I should stop rewriting my website and start finishing all of the blog ideas I have!