📣 GraphQLConf 2024 • Sept 10-12 • San Francisco • Read more
2024-04-12-announcing-new-graphql-website

Announcing New GraphQL Website

by Dimitri POSTOLOV & Uri GOLDSHTEIN

Hi, everyone! I’m Dimitri POSTOLOV from The Guild, and today I’m excited to announce the new GraphQL.org website.

2 weeks ago, we released a new GraphQL website. We’ve been working on this for about 2 months, and we’re excited to share it with you.

A Little Dive into History

An initial version of GraphQL.ORG v0 was created almost 8 years ago by Lee BYRON in 2016.

Screenshot of initial version of GraphQL.ORG v0

An initial version of GraphQL.ORG v0

Later, after 4 years in 2020, the website was migrated to Gatsby by The Guild members Saihajpreet SINGH and Arda TANRIKULU.

Screenshot of GraphQL.ORG v1 with Gatsby

GraphQL.ORG v1 x Gatsby

All of us GraphQL developers spent a lot of time learning this language from the “Learn” page, which is shown below, and you definitely remember it!

Also, we all hated visiting this page at night due to the lack of a night theme. 😅

Screenshot of GraphQL.ORG v1 learn page

GraphQL.ORG Learn page x Gatsby

With the new website, we’ve made a lot of improvements, including a dark theme, below how the “Learn” page looks like:

Screenshot of GraphQL.ORG v2 learn pageScreenshot of GraphQL.ORG v2 learn page

GraphQL.ORG Learn page x Nextra

What’s New

Here is a recap of the new features and improvements we’ve made to the website:

Migration to Nextra 3 & Vercel

We migrated from Gatsby & Netlify to Nextra and Next.js. We chose Nextra because it’s a great tool for building documentation websites, also The Guild maintains and improves it continuously. This migration helped us to improve the website’s performance and bundle size.

This migration was the final part before releasing the upcoming Nextra version. You can read my blog post about Nextra 3 in The Guild blog. Recently, we migrated all The Guild documentation websites to Nextra 3, and we can assume that it’s stable for production.

Also, at the same time while migrating this website, I started to work on the future Nextra 4 version with app router support. Once the first Nextra 4 alpha is out, this website be updated too!

New Search Engine

A search was migrated from Algolia to Nextra’s built-in search Flexsearch

Light and Dark Themes

For the first time, since the creation of GraphQL.ORG, we have a dark theme! You can switch between light and dark themes using the toggle in the top right corner.

Improved Accessibility

Accessibility and contrast mode have been improved to make the website more accessible.

Better Bundle Size and First Load Time

The new website has a better bundle size and first load time compared to the previous version.

New /code and /community Pages

We are excited to show the new Code page which was renamed to “Tools and Libraries”. You can read in the GitHub repo how to contribute to this page and add your library or tool.

The community page was redesigned and restructured. And now you can find all community resources in one place.

New /conf Page for GraphQLConf 2024

With the new website, we are excited to announce the upcoming GraphQLConf 2024. More info can be read on GraphQLConf 2024 page or in the official announcement blogpost.

Also, you can check the previous conference GraphQLConf 2023.

Conclusion

When I started to learn GraphQL in 2018 I could never imagine that one day I would be working on this migration! I am excited to be a part of this journey and finally release the new website which is much better than the previous 🥳.

Subscribe to me in X and GitHub and see you in GraphQLConf 2024 🚀.