How I built télé.guide

Screenshots

télé.guide on desktop and mobile: the home page, tonight's TV and the cinema section.

The need

Finding out what's on tonight shouldn't mean closing three banners and waiting for a 10 MB page to load. I wanted TV listings that show up instantly, even on an old phone, and that genuinely help you choose: the film's rating, its cast, and a daily commented pick of the evening.

Tech stack

• Next.js (App Router) on my own server, behind a home-made HTTPS proxy, with no heavy database.
• XMLTV EPG grids: 100+ channels (free-to-air, cable, satellite) imported and cross-checked daily, grids precomputed every night.
• TMDb to enrich film pages: cast, posters, ratings, plus the history of TV broadcasts.
• OpenAI to write editorial texts once, such as tonight's pick, which are then stored.

Cinema & tonight's TV

The Cinema section gathers the year's and the season's theatrical releases, CNC-approved French films, actors and directors.

Each film has a single page under /films/, fed by TMDb and by the EPG grid when it airs on TV: a film keeps the same URL whether it's in theatres or on air. Example: Ryan Coogler's Sinners.

Dated /ce-soir/ pages offer a commented pick of the evening's programmes — opinions, not a copy of the grid — such as the evening of Thursday 1 October 2026. The text is generated once and cached, and the page stays online after its date.

Oscars & top-rated films

A dedicated 2026 Oscars page presents the full list of winners of the 98th ceremony and the nominations. On the TV side, several views help you choose at a glance:

• “Now”: what's on right now on every channel;
• “Evening”: the prime-time programme, with its exact start time;
• “Top rated”: films on air, ranked by their TMDb rating;
• “My channels”: choose which channels appear in the grid, remembered in your browser.

AI texts & updates

Editorial texts are written once with the help of AI, then stored in a timestamped JSON cache; a daily job prepares the pick for the new evening. OpenAI is never called at request time: pages load instantly and stay stable for Google.

SEO & indexable pages

The dynamic sitemap exposes the home page, per-channel grids, the cinema section, every film page and every recent /ce-soir/ page. Metadata (title, description, Open Graph) is computed per route, and internal linking connects grids, film pages, the Oscars and evening picks around queries like “TV tonight” or “film tonight”.

This page on my portfolio documents the project and links to télé.guide — useful for backlinks from a personal site with moderate but topically relevant authority (web development + TV media).