Hey everyone! I’m working on adding a blog section to my website and I want to keep things simple. I don’t want to deal with external headless CMS solutions or third-party services that need constant updates and maintenance. I prefer building something lightweight from scratch using JavaScript.
I’m looking for recommendations on which npm modules would be best for this project. What packages have you used successfully for creating blog functionality? I need something that can handle basic features like post creation, editing, and displaying content. Any suggestions would be really helpful!
Try Fastify over Express - way better performance right out of the gate. I’ve run my personal blog on Fastify + SQLite for 18 months and it’s crazy fast and lightweight. For content management, use @fastify/static for assets and node-cache for basic caching - massive difference in load times. Need comments or user stuff? jsonwebtoken handles auth cleanly without extra dependencies. Pro tip: implement proper slug generation early. I learned this the hard way - use the slugify package for SEO-friendly URLs from post titles. Whole setup uses maybe 6-7 packages and handles everything without bloat.
honestly, koa.js is perfect for this. i pair it with lowdb for simple json storage - zero database headaches. add helmet for security and you’re set. i’ve been running this setup for my side project blog and it’s ridiculously easy to maintain. lowdb gives you real database queries but everything’s just json files, so backups are literally copying a file.
I built a custom blogging system last year using Express.js and MongoDB - worked great. Used Mongoose for the database stuff since it’s way easier than raw MongoDB queries for schemas and validation. Express-validator helped sanitize inputs and avoid security issues when users create/edit posts. Pro tip: get a good markdown parser early. I went with marked.js and it handled all my content formatting without being bloated. For file uploads and images, multer is a lifesaver. Best part? You control everything - data structure, customization, the works. I’m running about 200 posts with zero performance issues and barely any maintenance once you nail the initial setup.