Pure Blog

Pure Blog is a minimal, forkable blog template built with Next.js that separates post content from metadata and ships with a draft preview mode for reviewing unpublished posts. It is designed as a clean starting point for developers who want their own blog without a heavy CMS, using plain Markdown files stored in directories.

What is Pure Blog?

Pure Blog is a Next.js project bootstrapped with create-next-app that renders a blog from Markdown files placed in the _posts folder. It takes Markdown posts with YAML frontmatter (title, description, tags) as input and produces a static blog site as output. The template deliberately keeps the posts content separate from the meta-post data, and its author designed it to make blogs clear and easy to use.

Key Features

• Content and metadata separation — posts live in _posts while changable metadata about posts and the blog is stored in _data/meta-post.
• Draft support — _drafts folder holds unpublished posts, limited to one directory level.
• Preview mode — visiting /api/preview?mode=on loads drafts into the site; mode=off disables preview.
• Flexible post storage — public posts can be organized in folders under _posts.
• Simple frontmatter schema — each post uses title, desc, and tags in YAML frontmatter.
• Built on Next.js — created with create-next-app, with a standard dev server via npm run dev or yarn dev.
• Open source license — released under the GPL.

Who is it for?

Pure Blog is aimed at developers who want a minimal blog template they can fork and customize. It suits personal bloggers who prefer writing in Markdown and want to manage posts through files, and developers looking for a lightweight Next.js blog without pulling in a CMS or database.

Use cases

• Developers: fork the repository, write posts in _posts, and deploy the Next.js app to Vercel or any Node hosting.
• Writers with technical skills: keep drafts in _drafts and preview them via the built-in preview mode before publishing.
• Open-source enthusiasts: use it as a learning base for how to structure content and metadata separation in Next.js projects.

Note: The template does not include authentication, comments, or analytics by default — it is a clean, content-focused blog starter.