OpenSacred — Hindu Scripture Library

A free, open, ad-free digital library of Hindu sacred texts — starting with the complete Bhagavad Gita (all 700 verses) in Sanskrit, transliteration, English translation, and multi-scholar commentary.

---

Before You Deploy — Set Your Domain

Before deploying, set your domain in two places:

1. Vercel environment variable (or .env.local for local dev):

NEXT_PUBLIC_SITE_URL=https://your-domain.com

2. Static files (find and replace YOUR_DOMAIN with your real domain):

• public/robots.txt — sitemap URL
• public/llms.txt — all reference URLs

That's it. All other domain references in the codebase read from NEXT_PUBLIC_SITE_URL automatically.

---

Contact Form Setup

The contact form sends messages to opensacred.in@gmail.com via Gmail SMTP.

Add these to your Vercel environment variables:

GMAIL_USER=opensacred.in@gmail.com
GMAIL_APP_PASSWORD=your-16-char-app-password

To generate a Gmail App Password:

1. Go to your Google Account → Security → 2-Step Verification (must be enabled)
2. Search "App passwords" → Create one named "OpenSacred"
3. Copy the 16-character password into GMAIL_APP_PASSWORD

---

Tech Stack

• Next.js 15 (App Router) + React 19
• TypeScript
• Tailwind CSS v4 + shadcn/ui
• Deployed on Vercel

---

Local Development

# 1. Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/opensacred.git
cd opensacred

# 2. Install dependencies
npm install

# 3. Set up environment
cp .env.example .env.local
# Edit .env.local — set NEXT_PUBLIC_SITE_URL and Gmail credentials

# 4. Start dev server
npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000.

---

Deploying to Vercel

1. Push code to GitHub
2. Go to vercel.com → New Project → import your repo
3. Add Environment Variables in Vercel dashboard:
   • NEXT_PUBLIC_SITE_URL → your domain (e.g. https://opensacred.in)
   • GMAIL_USER → opensacred.in@gmail.com
   • GMAIL_APP_PASSWORD → your 16-char app password
4. Click Deploy ✓

---

Adding YouTube Videos to Chapters

1. Open src/data/chapters.ts
2. Find the chapter and set videoUrl:

{
  number: 2,
  videoUrl: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOUR_VIDEO_ID",
}

---

SEO & AI Visibility

• Dynamic sitemap covering all 700 verse URLs
• Per-page JSON-LD structured data (Chapter + Quotation schema)
• robots.txt allows GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended
• llms.txt for AI crawler readability

---

License

Sanskrit verse text is in the public domain. All other content © OpenSacred.