I’ve previously written about doing tutorial based projects and how it’s not a bad thing.
What can happen, is that your project looks like everyone else’s who did the same tutorial.
Again, this is not a bad thing.
But you can take your learning a step further by adding features onto those projects.
Here are some ideas to get you started
Automation
- Automatically deploy changes each time a git repo is updated
CRUD operations
- If a user can create items as part of your project, can they edit them as well?
Deploy
- Migrate your backend database to Postgres and host on Heroku.
- Automatically deploy your frontend to Netlify or Vercel.
Error handling
- What happens if a user tries to navigate away from a page while they were filling out a form field?
- What if there is no result from an API query?
Form validation
- Are there any form fields are required or nullable?
- What happens if a user enters a string when a field is only meant to access numbers?
How To
- A blog post, video, tutorial, etc on how you built a new feature or solved a problem.
oAuth
- Give users the ability to login with Google, Facebook, etc
Offline access
- What does a user see if there is a slow connection? Do they see a blank screen or some content?
- Store changes in the browser with a service worker until database access is restored
Permissions
- If a user is logged in, should they be able to view assets created by another user?
Refactor
- Take a look at your code and see if there are opportunities to DRY it up.
- Incorporate arrow functions, swap
var
instances forlet
orconst
, incorporate asynchronous functions. - Remove
console.log()
,debug()
andTODO
comments from deployed code.
Styling
- Better rendering for mobile, dark/light mode toggle, make sure it’s accessible, etc.
Security
- Are there any risks of exposed API keys or sensitive user data?
- Is CORS enabled?
Tests
- Write test to validate functions are outputting the expected results.
Uses
- A uses or about page can tell the story of how you build your project, technologies used, creative process, etc.
One response to “Planning Your Escape from Tutorial Hell”
[…] The list of ideas on what to add to your tutorial projects was getting log, so I’ve broken it out into its own blog post. Planning Your Escape from Tutorial Hell […]