After two years of developing with React, Nextjs, Gatsby ... I still work with Laravel for some projects where ShareHosting is the optimal solution for small things. One of this project is AlOficial.com, a web for Venezuela to check the value of the dollar against the local currency, after a few days I decided to do a mayor upgraded, using node.js and also React Native app to monetize.

This was my developer quest:

Why node.JS

Let's be honest, JS is like sex, once you use it, you never want to use other things. It is so flexible that PHP becomes a little bit frustrating. Don't get me wrong, Laravel is a great tool, it to develop everything you want using all the resources that shared hosting can give you. But still, Javascript wins.

That why I deploy my project in a shared hosting that allows node.Js apps. I began to my deployment with Laravel, and it worked well but the web has still some needed of magic javascript touch.

First Try, Laravel + React

React is my prefered tool to work, and now Laravel allows to make your front end using React, but there is always a catch. React on Laravel is not the same as you work with "create-react-app", you can, however, create your project on React then use Laravel API to communicate with your app and voila... everything things ok...

But No, AlOficial requires something very important to be monetized, and that is SEO (search engine optimization) so we come back to the begging, I needed something whit SSR (server-side rendering).

NextJs and GatsbyJs

I have read how powerfull was NextJs, and I was very interested to use in full server project. NextJS makes your code easier and cleaner. Then I saw Gatsby whit a wonderful collection of templates that I even use for my website. I was just ready to do my evil plan when... my hosting server had a small rule... Only work with NodeJS 8 and 9... and NextJS and GatsbyJs require 10. My evil plan was gone.

The Rise of Vue... or Nuxt...

In my mind, I was only thinking about how to solve two problems: 1) I need a Native app to monetize AlOficial and 2) I need to remake your web... Then I think about other possibilities... I learned about Vue when I was Freelance and maybe I can solve with Nuxt (NextJs version of React). So then I began with AlOficial transformation, hoping to end it well.