DevLog

Summary

What it is

DevLog is the site you are reading now. It combines a writing-first public blog with a custom admin dashboard for publishing MDX articles, uploading optimized cover/content images, managing featured posts, and tracking lightweight reader engagement.

Why it exists

The problem behind it

DevLog exists for two reasons. First, I wanted a place to document what I am learning while building real systems. Second, I wanted to teach younger students and early-career developers the things that often feel intimidating at first: cloud infrastructure, DevOps practices, backend architecture, system design, and security-minded engineering.

Brief architecture

How it is put together

The public site is a Next.js app that renders blog, project, and profile pages. The admin experience talks to an Express backend with Prisma and PostgreSQL for article management. Images are uploaded through the backend into S3, then optimized asynchronously by an AWS Lambda image-compression service before the final URLs are used in articles.

Highlights

What this project covers

• Server-rendered public pages with article SEO metadata and social sharing.
• Admin publishing flow with MDX editing, draft/published/archive states, and featured posts.
• S3 image uploads with Lambda-based optimization for cover and content images.
• Anonymous view and love counters without requiring reader accounts.