Day 50 #100DaysOfCode — Introduction to Next.js

Over the past days of my 100 Days of Code challenge, I learned how to build UI components with React, manage state, and handle user interactions on the frontend. On the backend side, I worked with Node.js and Express.js to build APIs, connected them to databases, and understood how data flows between the client and the server. But as I kept building, one thing became obvious — maintaining a separate frontend and backend project, manually setting up routing with React Router, and figuring out how to make pages SEO-friendly was adding a lot of overhead to every project. This is where Next.js changes the game. What is Next.js Next.js is a React framework that helps you build: Faster apps SEO-friendly apps Full-stack applications Key features Next.js adds to React: Feature What it means File-based routing Your folder structure is your routing Server-Side Rendering (SSR) Pages are rendered on the server per request Static Site Generation (SSG) Pages are pre-built at deploy time API Routes W