I had planned to follow these steps one after another to create a simple CRUD website with Express and MongoDB Atlas:

  1. run a “hello world” example on my local machine.
  2. deploying it to a common platform, e.g. Vercel.
  3. wiring up the deployed Express App to the Mongo Atlas database

Steps 1 and 2 were fine. This official guide was helpful, even though I still don’t understand exactly why I need to remove the following line before deploying:-

app.listen(port, () => console.log(`Server ready on port ${port}.`))

(I assume it is because the app needs to listen to a different port on the Vercel server.)

Step 3 was however very convoluted, given I had chosen Vercel at Steps 1 and 2. There are online guides (including official guidance), but there are a lot of nitty gritty set up I would rather avoid.

In the end I decided to change track and deploy on Render instead following this tutorial and repo.

The finished product is here: it takes a while to load because the server needs to “wake up” every time someone visits.

Going forward, it seems a better idea to start with Step 3 in mind. Integrating a deployed database with the deployed website is straightforward, and I want all the help I can get.