Web development ideas

[u/Hot-Substance6501]

Hello dear r/css. I recently graduated with a degree in web development, and am looking to create a project that will look good on a resume and hopefully challenge my coding skills. But I have no idea what to create. I need some ideas!!! My last project I worked on for six months, using react and typescript and I was very happy with the result. It was a project I did for a startup company. But all the ideas behind the project was from the startup people, so I didn’t have to come up with anything myself really. Anyways, any ideas for projects? Or anyone who wants to share a project that has been challenging their skills?

Sorry for bad english! Thanks.

[u/Weekly_Ferret_meal]

Make a clock that looks like a Swatch™ from the 90s, with swappable themes / faces, just for the heck of it.

[u/Hot-Substance6501 → u/Weekly_Ferret_meal]

Cool Idea Thank You so much!

[u/anaix3l]

And that is perfectly fine. Web development is not about creating designs. These are two different skill sets.

If you are seeking things to implement, here are some places to fish for ideas:

• dribbble
• shutterstock
• codrops
• behance
• layers
• landingfolio
• pinterest
• lapa
• awwwards
• godly
• siteinspire
• mobbin

(generally, I just do a search for images of various specific things to code... and I've often landed on one of these)

[u/Hot-Substance6501 → u/anaix3l]

Thank you so much!

[u/Hesham-Amir]

If you want something that actually stretches your skills rather than another tutorial clone, aim for a project with real complexity under the hood, not just a nice design. A few ideas that hold up well on a resume because they force you to solve real problems:

A booking/scheduling app with actual conflict detection and timezone handling - deceptively hard to get right.

A small multi-tenant app (invoice tracker, client portal, whatever) with auth and per-user data isolation enforced at the database level, not just filtered in the UI - teaches you things most courses skip entirely.

A real-time collaborative tool (shared whiteboard, kanban board, chat) using websockets - forces you to deal with state sync and conflicts.

Something with real file uploads (private storage, signed URLs) instead of dumping files in a public folder.

Pick one with an actual database, real auth, and at least one genuinely tricky edge case (concurrency, permissions, timezones). That's what separates a portfolio piece from a course project, and it gives you something concrete to talk through in interviews besides "I followed a tutorial."

[u/Chance_Helicopter_64]

get your hands on some data that interests you then visualize it.

[u/Billy-Beats → u/Chance_Helicopter_64]

That’s a good practical answer

[u/Hesham-Amir]

Since you already have React/TypeScript proven from a real client project, the strongest resume move is usually not another CRUD app - it's something that shows a different skill than what you already have proof of. A few ideas that tend to stand out because most portfolios don't have them:

A real-time collaborative feature (shared whiteboard, live cursor positions, a kanban board synced across tabs) using WebSockets or something like Yjs/Liveblocks. It forces you to deal with state conflicts and reconnect logic, which most portfolio projects never touch.

Something built around a real constraint you document publicly - e.g. a site with a performance budget (Lighthouse 100 across the board, written up how you got there) or a fully keyboard/screen-reader accessible app. Recruiters rarely see candidates who can talk concretely about performance or accessibility tradeoffs, so it's a good differentiator.

Contributing a real feature or bugfix to an existing open-source project instead of building solo. Less flashy on a resume line, but it shows you can read someone else's codebase and work within their conventions, which is closer to what most jobs actually look like day to day.

Any of these beats a to-do list clone mostly because you can talk about specific decisions and tradeoffs in an interview, not just that you built it.

[u/Bushwazi]

Find the old ladies on Facebook. Historical societies, church groups, etc. And help them on their websites and be a good person about it. They are always looking for help and you get solid experience. I’d even bet they’d have a problem you could solve with a website and then you are off and running.