Build Log#Next.js#Bilingual#Engineering

Shipping MLog from Scratch

Published: Mar 2, 2026Updated: Mar 2, 2026Reading time: 1 min

How we shipped the first MLog release with bilingual routing, a Markdown content layer, and a warm glassmorphism system.

Why locale-prefixed routes

We adopted /zh and /en instead of runtime language toggles. This gives us:

clearer SEO signals for each language,
shareable URLs without extra parameters,
stable slug-based switching between languages.

Content contract

Each post lives under content/posts/<slug>/ with zh.md and en.md. Frontmatter is validated at build time, so malformed dates and missing required fields fail fast.

title: string
date: ISO date
summary: string
tags: string[]
category: string
cover?: string
draft?: boolean
updated?: ISO date

Visual direction

We intentionally borrowed the feel of the reference project, not the exact layout:

warm gradient atmosphere,
translucent glass cards,
restrained spring motions,
single-column fallback on mobile.

The goal is clarity first, motion second.

What comes next

publish more real posts,
improve translation coverage,
iterate on homepage information architecture.