The Great Migration: When React Apps Find a New Home
An 11-Part Series on Integrating React into Docusaurus
Somewhere in the world right now, a developer is staring at a React application—maybe one with a hundred components, animations that took weeks to perfect, and styling so meticulously crafted it could make a designer weep—and they're asking themselves a question that has plagued software engineers since the dawn of the internet: How do I get this thing to work somewhere else?
This is a story about migration. Not the kind involving birds or desperate humans crossing borders, but the digital kind—the movement of code from one framework to another. Specifically, it's about taking a perfectly functioning React application and transplanting it into Docusaurus, the documentation framework that has quietly become the backbone of how we explain software to each other.
The Problem Nobody Talks About
The technology industry has a peculiar relationship with documentation. Everyone agrees it's important. Everyone claims to prioritize it. And yet, when it comes time to actually do it, most developers would rather debug a race condition in production at 3 AM than write a clear explanation of how their code works.
Docusaurus emerged as a solution to this collective procrastination. Built by Facebook (before they decided Meta sounded more futuristic), it promised to make documentation not just tolerable, but actually pleasant. The secret? Let developers use what they already know—React components—inside their documentation.
But here's where it gets interesting.
The Guide That Changes Everything
What you're about to read is based on a guide born from real-world experience. Not the sanitized, theoretical kind you find in official documentation, but the battle-tested, "I broke everything three times before this worked" variety. The source material comes from successfully integrating a React + Vite application with over 100 provider cards, modals, animations, and Tailwind CSS into Docusaurus.
That's not a typo. One hundred components. Modals that needed to overlay properly. Animations that had to survive the transition. And Tailwind CSS—which, if you've ever tried to integrate it with anything, you know can be either your best friend or your worst nightmare.
The Ten Chapters Ahead
This series will walk through ten distinct phases of migration:
Chapter 1: Prerequisites & Planning — Before you write a single line of code, you need to know what you're getting into. This is the reconnaissance mission.
Chapter 2: Install Docusaurus — The foundation. Getting the framework in place without breaking what you already have.
Chapter 3: Restructure Project — The great reorganization. Moving files to their new homes.
Chapter 4: Configure Styling — Where Tailwind CSS either cooperates or stages a rebellion.
Chapter 5: Migrate Components to Pages — The actual transplant surgery.
Chapter 6: Create Documentation — The reason you started this journey in the first place.
Chapter 7: Configure for Deployment — Getting ready to ship.
Chapter 8: Test & Verify — Trust, but verify. Then verify again.
Chapter 9: Troubleshooting — Because something will go wrong.
Chapter 10: Best Practices — The wisdom of those who've gone before.
Why This Matters
You might wonder why anyone would go through this trouble. The answer lies in a fundamental truth about software: code that isn't understood is code that eventually dies.
Documentation isn't just about explaining things to others. It's about explaining things to your future self—the version of you who returns to this codebase in six months, having forgotten why you made every decision. It's about the new team member who needs to get productive in days, not months. It's about the open-source community that might adopt your project if only they could figure out how to use it.
React applications are wonderful. They're interactive, responsive, and when done well, they feel alive. But they exist in isolation. Docusaurus offers something different: a way to make your React components not just functional, but teachable. To embed them directly in explanatory text, to show them working while explaining how they work.
The integration guide we'll explore isn't just a technical manual. It's a bridge between two worlds: the world of building software and the world of explaining it.
The Journey Begins
In the chapters that follow, we'll move methodically through each phase of migration. We'll celebrate the victories and, more importantly, we'll examine the failures—because it's in the failures that the real learning happens.
This isn't a story about perfect code. It's a story about the messy, frustrating, occasionally triumphant process of making software better. Of taking something that works in one context and making it work in another. Of building bridges between what we create and what we can teach.
Welcome to the great migration.
Next: Part 1 — Prerequisites & Planning: The Reconnaissance Mission
Series Navigation:
- Introduction (You are here)
- Part 1 →