Beam is a simple tool that allows members to write posts to share across your organization. Think of it like a lightweight internal blog. Features include a simple Markdown-based editor with preview, comments and likes, search, a clean responsive layout with dark mode support, and an admin role for hiding posts.

Setup

0. Install dependencies

npm install

1. PlanetScale database

• Create a PlanetScale database.
• Create a connection string to connect to your database. Choose Prisma for the format.
• Set up the environment variables:

cp .env.example .env

• Open .env and set the DATABASE_URL variable with the connection string from PlanetScale.
• Create the database schema:

npx prisma db push

2. Authentication provider

By default Beam uses GitHub for authentication, but you can use Okta if you prefer. View the Okta setup instructions.

[TODO: GitHub auth instructions]

3. Cloudinary

Beam uses Cloudinary for storing uploaded images. You can sign up for a free account.

• On your Cloudinary dashboard, look for these values under your account settings: Cloud Name, API Key, API Secret.
• Update .env with the following variables:
  • CLOUDINARY_CLOUD_NAME: Cloud Name
  • CLOUDINARY_API_KEY: API Key
  • CLOUDINARY_API_SECRET: API Secret

Running the app locally

npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000 in your browser.

Deploying to Vercel

One-click deploy:

After deploying, update the callback URLs for your preferred auth provider.

Built on open source

• Next.js as the React framework
• Tailwind for CSS styling
• Prisma as the ORM for database access
• PlanetScale as the database (MySQL)
• NextAuth.js for authentication
• Vercel for deployment