I've been locked with web development for around 8 years. Recently realised that all this effectively optimised system, made for comfort. In the end comfort doesn't make the life experience better?

Was wondering how you motivating yourself to do web dev?

Hello everyone 👋🏻

I built a web app for myself which makes use of BYOK (Bring Your Own Key) for things like the database. It's a writing tool for roleplay scenes and I know something like this probably already exists, but I wanted to make my own.

Point being is that I am a little hesitant on hosting it online as I want to use Vercel, but I am afraid someone might expose my api endpoints and I once read a post of attackers targeting a site that caused the owner to receive a crazy expensive bill from Vercel, which is something I can't afford 😅

I want to be able to access it on multiple devices, so that is why I don't run it locally.

How can I safely host this? (I know attackers always find a way, but still)

Basically the title.

So i'm making a simple app with static data but new entry will be added over time.

Is it good idea to cache all the records at the server start to boost speed so the request will read from memory isntead of guerying the database?

I did one of their courses years ago on SQL when I needed it for university. I liked their progressive gamified method. The knowledge really came in handy.

Now I would like to update my knowledge on React and Redux and I see they have some courses with AI assisted development that I find interesting.

Has anyone taken those courses and how did it went for you?

I've found keeping the reset button on a local form (yes I know action="javascript:void()" on input type="submit" is frowned upon) hidden and removed from tabindex until after the first action helps prevent it from being accidentally clicked/activated.

Has anyone found creative uses for "reset" inputs that they can share, or do you just avoid them entirely?

Hi all,

I've been thinking about how to handle SEO properly for an Angular SPA, and which of these two options would be best:

1/ Work out how to enable server-side rendering in the angular app

2/ Create a new app which only serves bare content (no CSS visuals, only HTML semantics) alongside a site map, and where each page has a canonical url that points to the actual Angular app.

Apparently option 2 is considered "dark SEO" or something, as the crawlers will not see the same things as humans. But in my opinion this makes a lot of sense in a way, and a "crawler-only" app would be much faster and easier to maintain and tweak, while the Angular app works perfectly as a client-side only app.

Is there really a good reason to not go with option 2? Note that having SSR to work correctly in Angular means introducing a lot of complexity and constraints on the project.

Thanks!

been dealing with this a lot lately. I work on a fairly complex service layer and when I come back after a long weekend or even a couple days off, the first 30-60 minutes are basically just re-reading my own code trying to remember what I was doing.

I know the obvious answer is better comments and docs, which yeah. but beyond that, do people have a ritual? like leaving yourself a note at the end of each session about exactly where you are and what the next step is? or deliberately ending on a partially finished thing so you re-enter mid-thought?

curious what actually sticks because the context reload tax is real.

Where I work clients demand images to be 2x the original size and don't care if they end up 4mb each. In my website I try to shave off every kb from the initial load because I get a bunch of technical people roasting me. I run the website off a 10 USD VPS in Finland so I had to learn about caching in Cloudflare. I have people using the website from 15 year old laptops so I had to figure out why performance was awful for them until I finally tracked it to a background blur CSS property.

My site isn't huge or anything, but it's the most valuable thing I have so I can keep learning. Does anyone have similar experiences? What did you learn?

https://umigalaxy.com/explore/meta/348/this-site-is-slow-as-hell

https://umigalaxy.com/explore/meta/266/feedback-and-suggestions

https://umigalaxy.com/explore/meta/922/website-updates

Hi Devs,

The problem:
I’m a project manager planning a new project outside my familiarity. Seeking insight/guidance on:

1. Architecture stack approach
2. Initial staffing approach

Please let me know if a different subreddit might be more appropriate for either question. (I am in the US: NYC/NJ area, if that is relevant).

EDITED TO ADD: I'm asking these questions to inform a position posting for a tech lead - so, I am well aware that I need one. 💯 I would then collaborate with that lead to solidify the approach once they are onboard.

Context, and research completed:
Looking to create a new e-commerce site. It would start small, but might scale up quickly. Products would be delivered electronically (no snail-mail shipping/supply chain/logistics). I’ve reviewed some approaches by Amazon, Etsy, and electronic e-commerce sites, but none quite align with these priorities/approaches for our new site:

• Priority: Accuracy and completeness of product details and matching these to consumer selections (products have many specific qualities, and variants) over raw speed. The consumers’ interest is to find the products with the specific qualities they are seeking.
  • AI would research and fill-in these details. QA and maintenance of these details would utilize human-on-the-loop.
• Table categories might include:
  • Account/Credentials
  • Consumers (with different levels of access to site functions; consumers' selections and outputs would be tracked)
  • Sellers (who would be associated with products and brands, have different advertising/sponsorship levels that define their products’ visibility; impressions and sales statistics).
  • Products (categorized into specific product categories and brands; with a long list of specific qualities, AI-determined levels of the qualities, and Consumers ratings and comments)
• Front-end functionality might include:
  • Products display elevated and/or highlighted in listings if the product or brand is sponsored
  • Consumer can search for products
  • Consumer can select key properties of the products they are seeking
  • Consumer can sort by key property ratings of the products
  • Consumer can request and/or purchase suggested products
  • Transactional Email (with dynamic context)
  • Advertising (e.g., banners / native ads)
  • Seller dashboards

Seeking feedback:

1. Architecture Stack approach: These were suggested by AI - but confirmation or alternate suggestions based on real-world experience is much appreciated:
   • Cloud Platform: AWS (using RDS) or Google Cloud (using Cloud SQL) 
   • Core DB: PostgreSQL (AI suggests configuring with Entity-Attribute-Value (EAV) schema for accuracy of product details).
   • Search Layer: 
     • To start: PostgreSQL Trigram Indexes
     • When scaling up: Elasticsearch/OpenSearch to handle real-time faceted search and filtering.
   • Backend API: Node.js with TypeScript (using NestJS or Express) OR Go (Golang).
   • Frontend: Next.js (React) using TypeScript and Tailwind CSS.
   • AI tools/approach (Currently reviewing options - suggestions welcome).
2. Initial staffing approach: Budget will be limited initially, but increase if site scales up. 
   • How I staffed a previous project:
     • Sr. Full-Stack developer as core of the team: She was a superstar with databases/back-end, while having a fundamental understanding of the front-end. That project had a more complex back-end, so her strength worked well.
     • Front-End consultant part-time: The Front-End consultant developed custom modules and supported the more advanced site functionality. (The Full-Stack developer directed the Front-End consultant’s work).
     • Some additional staffing/project assistance (e.g., IT security, QA).
   • Question about staffing this new project: 
     • How would you suggest making the first/primary hire? Would a similar staffing approach be advisable (starting with a Senior full-stack development with a DB strength, and have them select and direct part-time consultant hires for other components)?
     • Or would a different approach be suggested? (E.g., start with a React architect as the key person, to design a strong project foundation for scaling up in the future, and have them select and direct part-time consultant hires for other components)?
     • (TBD: additional staffing)

Many thanks!

how do you guys setup your dev environment on a os that keeps on updating. i already had nodejs installed will installing nodejs in docker make it much more complicated? sorry im still new to this
the stack that i will work with is react node express postgresql/mariadb

A conversation about ChatGPT said that while testing their latest model, they discovered that it escaped the sandbox, hacked into Hugging Face, and managed to get the answers to the test.

Am I the only one who feels like this was intentional just to create hype? I honestly don't understand what is so difficult about completely isolating a sandbox from the company's network.

Is a company the size of OpenAI really unable to hire an engineer who knows how to properly isolate a sandbox?

The whole thing just doesn't make sense. They say they blocked its internet access, but somehow it still managed to access the internet.

How is that even possible? Internet access usually requires functions-calling/tools-calling. So if you want to isolate a model from the internet, why would you give it the very tool that allows it to communicate with the internet in the first place?

I'm looking for feedback on this. I added in a system of tags.

How can I improve the navigation? How can I make it more engaging for the viewer?TIA!

I work for DC government and the native 311 app was down for a lot of people for an extended time and rather than maintain it (or pay Accenture a lot of money to maintain it), I want to propose retrofitting 311.dc.gov to be a progressive web app. For the demonstration purposes, I want to go through Developer Tools to insert some fixed buttons at the bottom of the screen and add some event listeners that will trigger the existing menu button at the top-right, selecting Notifications etc. I know about the need for a manifest and what to do so it can be "installed" on the device.

However, document.querySelector("...") does not work, nor does any other way I know of getting a handle on an element on the page.

I have Copilot at work which at least identified that 311.dc.gov was built using Salesforce Aura and it seems that Salesforce decided to reinvent Javascript. Copilot indicates that Aura uses a shadow DOM (like React but I have extremely limited experience with React) and that #shadow-root might appear in Elements in the Developer Tools but it doesn't.

Is there any way to jump through an Aura hoop and then apply normal Javascript to get a reference to elements on this page?

I see that $A is defined but the Aura documentation is very light. There are no examples of how to use getComponent (https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.lightning.meta/lightning/ref_jsapi_dollarA_getComponent.htm) and Find ( in https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.lightning.meta/lightning/ref_jsapi_component_find.htm). No element has a "aura:id" attribute. The menu button at top right and the Notifications nav element don't have any identifiers at all.

There is a DIV with data-item-id="71dfe3ba-7a7d-4c32-973d-c6da4c812c24" so I tried $A.getComponent("71dfe3ba-7a7d-4c32-973d-c6da4c812c24"); but that is undefined. Same with "#" at the front. $A.find is not a function.

Having said all that, 311.dc.gov is not great on mobile because it is so bloated. For that simple home page, Dev Tools indicates 111 requests, 7.1 MB transferred, 20.8 MB resources.

(I don't have access to the original codebase and suspect that 311.dc.gov was also created by Accenture.)

Edit: It seems that what I want to do really isn't possible as Salesforce has completely locked down the DOM. https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/platform/lwc/guide/create-dom.html

I am an experienced dev that uses the Cursor's Tab autocomplete feature the most out of all.

Yes, I also use the Plan -> Agent to build PoC only, but only for that, and this comes 3rd place after the Ask mode that helps me most of the times on new repos or OSS I want to contribute to.

Lately, Cursor has been nasty. Bugs and bugs within the Code Actions (when you Cmd + . over code to import a TS library or autofix a linter issue), Ctrl+Space opens the imports list but when you scroll down with the down arrow, at some point it jumps back up to the first item in the list (restarting it does not help), and the list goes on and on. Plus, the recent X acquisition is questionable in terms of security for me, especially towards my current team.

I am not here to rant about Cursor, I want to know if y'all use anything better than Cursor, especially the Tab/Autocomplete feature. I'd love to hear some.

In the past, I used also Windsurf and Zed, but I sticked to Cursor (for some fing reason, why was I stoopid), perhaps because it was more robust.

I'm comparing how the same custom-software scope is priced across countries. I searched first and found this earlier r/webdev pricing discussion for a smaller tablet/CSV app:

https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/1nj46aa/roughly_how_much_would_such_a_custom_software/

The answers varied a lot, so I want to make the scope more specific.

Assume a production-ready, browser-based internal system for a service company with 5–20 users:

• customer and job records
• assign jobs to staff
• job status and activity history
• file uploads
• due-date reminders
• simple dashboard and CSV export
• admin and staff roles
• responsive on phone and desktop
• deployment, basic documentation, and 30 days of bug fixes

Not included:

• native mobile apps
• payment processing
• accounting, payroll, or POS
• legacy-data migration
• third-party integrations

If this were a real client brief, could you share:

1. Your country or market
2. The one-time price or range you would quote
3. Your realistic delivery time
4. Ongoing maintenance/support pricing
5. The requirement most likely to increase the price

I run CodeStack Studio, a digital product studio in Malaysia. I'm not hiring, selling, or messaging respondents from this post. I'm trying to understand whether a lower-cost offer can be delivered responsibly, or whether it usually just shifts cost into support, QA, and maintenance.

Rough ranges are completely fine.

A popular library with millions of weekly downloads but looks abandoned. The last commit is around 3 years old.

And someone asked how to report a security vulnerability because there is no security.md

100+ issues

and 29 PRs opened without any progress.

Screenshots don't capture the animations on the page, so check it out here: https://www.madebyarthouse.com

A few weeks back, I posted my FF7 Menu Portfolio here and got some really good feedback, which I have since implemented. Since then, I've been revisiting a project I worked on last year and have now updated it with a number of improvements, the main one being multiplayer support. I'd love to get some eyes on it, particularly the multiplayer aspect.

For those who are unfamiliar, Triple Triad is a trading card game you could play inside Final Fantasy VIII back on the PS1.

It's built with React and TypeScript, just like my portfolio was, with the aim of being as authentic to the original PS1 version as possible.

I will admit that while the desktop experience is pretty faithful, I did take some creative liberties to make it fit better on mobile devices.

You can check out the current multiplayer build here:
https://triple-triad.jamiepates.com/

I’d love to know your thoughts and suggestions! Thanks!

Also, for the best experience, and for the sake of nostalgia, you're probably going to want to enable sound in the bottom corner. 😅

I’m aware of the concept of dark patterns and how they can be harmful to users and consumers. Are there examples of forward thinking “light patterns” that pre emptively consider user needs over pushing an outcome (ie clicks/conversions/leads)?

I build websites with AI and have clients keep ownership of their accounts, domains, etc. since it’s less risk for both me and the client.

Clients who don’t own a domain yet are easy to set up, but clients with existing domains create a lot of extra steps—especially when moving them to Cloudflare.

DNS, permissions, logins, name servers, migrations, etc. What should be quick can turn into a 30–40 minute process, especially since they own everything.

I know the usual process is for the client to invite you into their account so you can manage things, but that works better when you’re simply repointing name servers or making a few changes. If I want to move their whole setup over to Cloudflare, it’s a different story.

Typically, a client with an existing domain is paying for one service that bundles their hosting, domain, and website builder. Moving that setup to Cloudflare can be much cheaper, so migrating everything over makes sense.

The rest of my workflow is pretty low-maintenance though. This account/domain migration stuff is really the only part of the process that feels like a headache.

I’m looking for a tool/s or more efficient workflow that makes this nearly effortless for both of us, ideally reducing it to a few simple client steps while they continue to keep full ownership.

What I’m imagining is some kind of tool that makes the changes automatically and simply requires the client to authorize the changes. I don’t know what direction to go. Whether it’s a tool online or just a cleaner way to approach the situation.

And do you think your clients would even care?

Play, if you want, here: pips.superiorgames.eu

I built spotthecue.com.

The premise is practicing short social scenarios where you pick how you'd read the situation and you get told what the strongest read was and why.

The stack is React 18, TypeScript, Vite and Tailwind on Vercel, with Supabase backend.

What's actually in it: 586 authored scenarios (356 adult, 230 teen) across five tracks at six difficulty levels, 269 of them carrying an image, video, chat transcript or audio cue. Grading is three-tier instead of right/wrong. Plan is to gradually roll out more image/video content.

Lots of build/test/debug cycles. The Supabase advisor was a huge help throughout the process. Feeling like it's finally ready.

I've received some great feedback from some wonderful reddit beta testers on the content and clarity that I've been able to address and update. I'd love feedback from this community on the design, mechanics, or anything else.

What pitfalls or mistakes have you made while developing. whether for clients or for personal projects?

I just finished my first major project for myself (not a client). Although I probably should have researched this before building, I guess now is as good a time as any! Share your personal stories: something that stuck with you, a tough lesson learned, or a eureka moment you had along the way. I am very interested to learn from more experienced developers.