Creating a website with Next.js and React

Next.js is a popular framework for building React applications that simplifies the development of production-ready sites by offering features like server-side rendering, automatic code-splitting, and static exporting. This guide walks through the process of bootstrapping a Next.js web application, starting with setting up the environment with Node.js and using the create-next-app command for a quick start. It covers adding essential components and creating a directory structure for pages, such as the /pages directory which maps files to URL paths. The guide demonstrates fetching data from external APIs using the Isomorphic-Unfetch package, showcasing how to display NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day. It explains the steps to build and run the application in production, emphasizing the ease of deployment with Next.js. The tutorial concludes by encouraging users to expand their applications with custom styling, additional pages, and enhanced functionalities, while also highlighting tools like LogRocket for monitoring and debugging Next.js applications in production.