Infrastructure Test: Your Essays Platform Is Ready

April 8, 2026•By Cinematic Essays•Film Theory

The Infrastructure Is Live

This page confirms that the blog routing, layout, and content system are now operational. When you proceed to Phase 2, you will replace this file with your first cinematic essay.

What Was Built

1. Content Directory: src/content/blog/ now exists to hold all .mdx essay files

2. Dynamic Routing: /blog/[slug] route renders essays with full metadata handling

3. Blog Index: /blog shows all essays chronologically with excerpts

4. Typography System: Tailwind prose classes optimized for dark theme with serif headers

5. Navigation: "Essays" link added to main header for crawler visibility

6. Frontmatter Schema: YAML frontmatter with title, date, author, category, and description

Next Steps (Phase 2)

Replace this file with the first cinematic essay. You may delete this file (placeholder-essay.mdx) once you've confirmed the /blog route works in development.

Technical Details

- Format: .mdx (supports React components inline)

- Parser: gray-matter extracts YAML frontmatter; next-mdx-remote renders content

- Styling: prose-invert classes provide readability for film-theory long-form text

- SEO: Full OpenGraph metadata generation for each essay

The system is ready for your film theory essays.