The way developers approach new web applications has changed due to Next.js. For a long time, dynamic sites used a combination of Server-side Rendering (SSR) and Client-side Rendering (CSR) to display dynamic data in their applications. SSR succeeded well because developers were able to build HTML before passing it on to the browser, allowing search engines to readily crawl it.

This post will walk through the creation of a realtime chat application with Next.js and deploying it to Vercel. You'll learn how to: Check out a running version of the app.

Next.js is a complete React framework that provides a rich experience for developers in building web applications. You get a fast and reliable refresh on code changes, support for TypeScript and the ability to create a hybrid static and server-side rendered page. The file system and API routing features make it a go-to React solution for server-side applications.