bsoong.com

Personal site and CMS for Brandon Soong: public identity pages, writing, projects, resume, and a password-protected admin that publishes without a redeploy.

Local setup

Prerequisites

• Node.js 20+
• Docker (for local Postgres)

1. Start Postgres

docker run -d --name portfolio-pg \
  -e POSTGRES_USER=postgres \
  -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=postgres \
  -e POSTGRES_DB=portfolio \
  -p 54329:5432 \
  postgres:16

If the container already exists: docker start portfolio-pg.

2. Environment

cp .env.example .env

Set at least:

Variable	Notes
DATABASE_URL	postgresql://postgres:postgres@localhost:54329/portfolio
AUTH_SECRET	openssl rand -base64 32
PREVIEW_SECRET	openssl rand -hex 32
ADMIN_EMAIL	Sign-in email
ADMIN_PASSWORD_HASH	From npm run hash-password -- "your-password"
NEXT_PUBLIC_SITE_URL	http://localhost:3000 locally

Next.js expands $VAR in .env files, which mangles bcrypt hashes. Escape every $ as \$. The hash-password script prints that escaped form for .env and the raw hash for the Vercel dashboard.

When DATABASE_URL is local Postgres, leave BLOB_READ_WRITE_TOKEN empty so uploads go to ./.uploads. When it is production Neon, set the Blob token (and re-upload the resume once) so /resume.pdf is not a missing local path.

3. Migrate, seed, run

scripts/ is local-only and not in git. A fresh clone will not include seed, hash-password, or content dumps until those files are copied onto the machine. package.json still points at them (db:seed, hash-password).

npm install
npx drizzle-kit migrate   # or: npm run db:migrate
npm run db:seed
npm run dev

Production-style check:

npm run build
npm start

Open http://localhost:3000. Admin is at /admin.

Local admin (dev only)

After seeding with the committed .env defaults used in development:

• Email: bsoong99@gmail.com
• Password: admin1234

Change these before deploying. The seed script wipes existing CMS rows and reloads from local scripts/ (not in git) — apply npm run db:migrate and npm run db:seed (ALLOW_DB_SEED=true when the URL is not localhost) against the target database before prod.

Useful scripts

Script	Purpose
npm run db:generate	Generate a Drizzle migration from schema changes
npm run db:migrate	Apply migrations (commit the SQL; execute against the target DB before prod)
npm run db:seed	Reset and load local scripts/ dumps (ALLOW_DB_SEED=true for non-local DBs; directory is gitignored)
npm run hash-password -- "…"	Print bcrypt hash (escaped + raw)

Stack

Next.js (App Router) · PostgreSQL · Drizzle ORM · Auth.js credentials · Tailwind CSS v4 · Vercel Analytics