## Overview If you haven't heard about Fresh, a popular web framework built on Deno, go take a quick look at the [home page](https://fresh.deno.dev/) first and then come back here. Coming primarily from Next.js and Astro, I'm intrigued and pleased to find lots to like about Fresh. The idea that everything is a server component that ships HTML to the client by default, but supports [islands architecture](https://fresh.deno.dev/docs/concepts/architecture) for independently rehydrated regions of interactivity where needed, really fits my use case well. I'm getting ready to start migrating [Fantastic Realms](https://fantasticrealms.ai), a Next.js project I'm working on (hoping to launch in early 2025), over to Deno and Fresh, and I plan to showcase that effort shortly. Andy Jiang ([@andyjiang](https://x.com/andyjiang))'s excellent [Fresh blog example](https://deno.com/blog/build-a-blog-with-fresh) was literally the first tutorial I followed when I was coming up to speed. I'm going to riff on his work with some tweaks to help others also come up to speed using the latest Deno release candidate in time for the official 2.0 launch this week. This is a quick dive into a simple blog engine to orient you to Deno and Fresh. Ideally you're already at least a bit familiar with another web framework, like Next.js. Here's what we'll cover here: * Setting up (installing Deno, upgrading to the latest 2.0 RC, and initializing a Fresh project) * Deleting unnecessary boilerplate to start "fresh" ;) * Adding components for rendering individual blog posts and then the blog index