What I learned in 1 year of web development. Advises from My Mistakes

I wasted a lot of time in wandering around the technologies. So this article is an effort to save your time.

If you are a beginner then this is definitely a good read.

  1. Use Bootstrap. Some people might suggest you to use Tailwind, but that will be a lot of time waste because you'll need to create components like modals, dropdowns from scratch. So just use already made components and focus more on bigger problems.

  2. Start learning VueJS. It's easy to pick up and will give you enough power to build more robust websites. Don't waste too much time with vanilla javascript.

  3. Use Laravel if you are interested in backend development, don't waste time in writing entire authentication system in just PHP.

  4. If you are interested in Front-End Development, then try to recreate pages from paid themes. For example, try to recreate this Folio theme. If get stuck then view the page source, look at HTML structure, classes, etc.

  5. Don't waste time in searching images, while writing code. Use dummy images for start, and when you are satisfied with the final version then search for images. Till then use DummyImage.com.

  6. Learn Git and GitHub as this will help you fix mistakes.

  7. If are using VueJS, then use NuxtJS and if you are using ReactJS the use NextJS.

  8. If you want to give personal look to websites built with Bootstrap, then make sure to customize it's variables.scss file using SASS.

  9. To keep your websites fast, keep an eye on optimisation, tree-shaking, and removing unused css, etc.

  10. Try to write as less code as possible, it will be easy to maintain in future.

  11. Use VS Code Extensions to speed up your workflow.

I tried to list what everything what is on top in my mind. Feel free to ask anything as would like to help in saving your time. Ask on twitter @RexWebMedia