From 76bf401ee97ca50d9bd2bc3f21a50f484ca786db Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Joe Fusco <hello@josephfus.co>
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2026 15:07:47 -0400
Subject: [PATCH] fix: revalidate blog 404s instead of pinning them for a year

An empty query response is indistinguishable from a genuinely missing
post, so returning notFound without revalidate lets Next cache a
transient upstream failure at s-maxage=31536000.
---
 src/pages/blog/[slug].jsx | 8 +++++++-
 1 file changed, 7 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/src/pages/blog/[slug].jsx b/src/pages/blog/[slug].jsx
index d4bf114..cdfde1b 100644
--- a/src/pages/blog/[slug].jsx
+++ b/src/pages/blog/[slug].jsx
@@ -108,8 +108,14 @@ export async function getStaticProps(context) {
 		revalidate: 3_600,
 	});
 
+	/**
+	 * An empty response is not proof the post is gone. A failed query returns
+	 * the same shape, so a `notFound` without `revalidate` pins a one year
+	 * `s-maxage` on what may be a transient upstream failure. Re-check on a
+	 * short interval instead.
+	 */
 	if (!props?.props?.data?.post) {
-		return { props: {}, notFound: true };
+		return { notFound: true, revalidate: 300 };
 	}
 
 	return props;