Over the past few days, I had started using Next.js (a React framework by Vercel) to build a new project, called Inkwyl.
Let me tell you what Inkwyl is and let me tell you my experiences.

https://inkwyl.vercel.app/
Inkwyl is a social network where you can write and share stories, or read others' stories.

It has:
A fully-functioning (and secure) account system
A story editor (through Quill.js)
A user profile system
Story-sharing and commenting for signed in users
Discovery pages (Users page for finding users, home page for finding stories)

My plan is to build up a community and then to start interacting with the community more, through writing contests and more.

The dream would be for it to be a place where publishers can scout for talent, like how a director does.

But first, we need a community.
I'm going to run a contest at 100 users, so if you want to join in, consider signing up!

Let's talk about my experiences making it.

I started Inkwyl a few days back when I had no other projects to work on (or no motivation to work on abandoned ones). I hadn't used Next.js before, but I had used React at a basic level before, so I decided to give it a try since it has serverless functionality and Vercel supports serverless (and I really like Vercel). I created a new Next.js app and called it Inkwyl. I made a basic layout and messed around with styling and stuff. Hadn't gotten too deep yet.

The next day, I did some research on routing and APIs in Next.js. I had made failed attempts at social medias before, so I had some knowledge on the structure of how to make them. I started out by making the account system. I hacked around a bit until I got something I liked and that was properly secured.

Security measures:
Password salting/hashing
Proper authorization on login
Shadowban implementation
And some more smaller things

I added JWT to the account system as well.

That day, I also added the editor (but not sharing).

The next day, I worked on a user profile system.
It took a while for the API route to get working properly, but I got it after a while.

Then was sharing stories. It was also a bit tricky but I eventually got that working.

I wanted to display the stories a user wrote on their profile, and it was surprisingly easy. I just find the stories with their user ID in the database and map it.

The comments were also easy to implement. It finds the comments with the story ID and maps them. Posting comments was also easy to do.

Then I made a users page (maps out usernames).

And besides some other small fixes, that's where we stand right now.

It would be greatly appreciated if you could check it out (again, at https://inkwyl.vercel.app/)
and if you want to check out my profile it's at https://inkwyl.vercel.app/user/b348b17c-f723-4835-9231-8a7e23cd4cf8

Thank you all and have a great day!