DEV Community: Muhammad Usman Idrees

Why We Built a Library of Ready-Made Websites for Small Businesses

Muhammad Usman Idrees — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 10:21:30 +0000

When building websites for small businesses, we noticed that many projects begin with almost the same set of decisions.

What should the website look like?

Which pages are needed?

What structure should we use?

How will the business know what the finished website will look like before development begins?

Starting every project from an empty canvas gives maximum flexibility, but it can also add time, uncertainty, and cost.

That led us to build the DevOnSite Website Library.

Starting with a working foundation

Instead of asking a business to imagine its website from a generic template screenshot, the library provides complete professionally designed business websites that can be explored first.

There are currently 17 website designs covering industries such as:

Restaurants and cafés
Trades and home services
Retail and e-commerce
Beauty and grooming
Health and wellness
Fashion and apparel
Real estate
Events and weddings
Automotive
Legal and professional services
Creative portfolios

The idea is simple:

Browse → choose a website → personalize it → preview it → decide whether to launch it.

Preview before committing

We wanted businesses to see something closer to their own website before making a decision.

A user can choose a design and personalize it with their business information, branding, and content.

They can preview the result without first creating an account.

If they want to continue, DevOnSite can take the selected website through the production process and launch it on the business's own domain.

From template to production

We don't see the library as simply a collection of templates.

The larger idea is to provide a starting point for an actual business website while still allowing customization where it matters.

Depending on the project, the launch process can include things such as:

Domain setup
Hosting
SSL
Forms
Analytics
Search Console setup
Content customization
Additional pages
Ongoing maintenance and support

For businesses that need functionality beyond the existing designs, there are also more customized and bespoke development options.

The trade-off we're exploring

The interesting problem for us is finding the right balance between templates and custom development.

Templates make websites faster to launch, but overly rigid templates can make every business look the same.

Fully custom development gives much more freedom, but it also requires more time, decisions, and budget.

Our approach is to begin with a professionally designed foundation and customize it where the individual business actually needs something different.

Explore the library

You can browse the current website designs here:

DevOnSite Website Library:
https://demos.devonsite.com/

I’d be interested in hearing from other web developers and agencies:

For small-business projects, do you prefer starting from a proven design foundation or designing every website from scratch?

Building a Team Chat Where Conversations Turn Into Tasks

Muhammad Usman Idrees — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 10:18:32 +0000

Team communication tools are great at helping people talk.

But we kept running into another problem: what happens after the conversation?

A discussion happens in a channel or direct message, someone agrees to do something, and that action eventually has to be copied into a separate task-management system.

That was one of the ideas behind building Toolscase Chats.

Bringing communication and work together

We wanted to create a workspace where a team could communicate normally while keeping the work that comes out of those conversations connected to the discussion.

Toolscase Chats currently supports:

Direct messages
Group conversations
Public and private channels
Threads
File and image sharing
Voice notes
Polls
Full-text search
Tasks and projects
Role-based access
Guest access

One of the more important parts for us was connecting conversations with tasks.

Instead of discussing something in chat and then manually recreating it somewhere else, a message can become a task. Those tasks can then be organized within projects.

Role-based access

Team communication becomes more complicated when external people need access.

Toolscase Chats supports Company Admin, Manager, Employee, and Guest roles.

Guests can be limited to the areas where they have explicitly been added, which makes it possible to include clients or external collaborators without exposing the entire workspace.

The product-design challenge

One question we continue to think about is:

How much project management should exist inside a communication tool?

If chat and task management are completely separated, teams constantly move information between applications.

But if too many project-management features are added to chat, the communication experience can become unnecessarily complicated.

We’re trying to find a useful middle ground where conversations can naturally become actionable work without turning the chat interface into a full project-management system.

Try it

Toolscase Chats has a free plan, and the full feature set can also be tried for 14 days without a credit card.

Toolscase Chats:
https://chat.toolscase.com/

I’d be interested to hear how other developers and teams handle this.

Do you prefer communication and task management in separate tools, or do you find it more useful when they are connected?

Building a B2B Prospecting Platform for Better Company Research

Muhammad Usman Idrees — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 12:49:32 +0000

B2B prospecting often involves jumping between different sources just to understand whether a company is worth reaching out to.

You might start with a company website, search for additional business information, evaluate whether the company fits your target market, organize what you've found, and then use that research when preparing outreach.

I have been working on Prospetra, a browser-based B2B prospecting and company research platform designed around making this workflow more organized.

The problem with prospect research

Finding a company is usually only the beginning.

Before starting outreach, useful questions might include:

What does this company actually do?
Is it relevant to the target market?
What information is available about the business?
Is it worth adding to the prospecting pipeline?
What context could make outreach more relevant?

When this research is spread across multiple tabs and tools, prospecting can quickly become repetitive.

Bringing research into one workflow

The idea behind Prospetra is to bring more of the prospect research process into a single web-based workflow.

Instead of treating prospecting as simply collecting a list of companies, the focus is on helping users understand the businesses they are researching.

This makes company information more useful when deciding which prospects deserve attention.

Research before outreach

One lesson from building the platform is that more prospects don't necessarily mean better prospecting.

A large list of companies isn't particularly useful if there is little context about them.

A more useful workflow looks something like:

Discover a potential company
        ↓
Research the business
        ↓
Evaluate its relevance
        ↓
Organize the prospect
        ↓
Prepare informed outreach

The research and qualification stages are important because they provide context for what happens next.

Designing for B2B workflows

Prospecting software also has an interesting UX challenge.

There can be a lot of information available about a company, but displaying everything at once can make the interface harder to use.

The application needs to help users move from discovering a company to understanding it without turning every prospect into an overwhelming collection of data.

That means deciding which information should be immediately visible and which details should be available when deeper research is needed.

Keeping prospecting actionable

Another challenge is making sure research leads somewhere.

Collecting information is useful, but eventually users need to decide what to do with a prospect.

The workflow therefore needs to connect research with organization and outreach rather than treating company information as an isolated dataset.

Building Prospetra

Prospetra is still something I am actively developing and improving.

Building it has been an interesting exercise in combining company research, prospect organization, and B2B outreach workflows into a single product while keeping the experience straightforward.

You can explore Prospetra and see the current platform.

I'd particularly appreciate feedback from developers, founders, and people involved in B2B sales:

What part of prospect research takes the most time in your current workflow?

Building a CV Builder Around Structured Resume Data and ATS-Friendly Workflows

Muhammad Usman Idrees — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 12:45:22 +0000

Creating a resume looks simple from the outside: add personal information, experience, education, and skills, then export the document.

Building a CV builder is more interesting.

The application needs to turn structured information into a document that remains readable, consistent, easy to update, and suitable for modern job application workflows.

We have been working on Toolscase CV Builder to make that process easier through a browser-based resume-building workflow.

A resume is structured data

One useful way to think about a CV builder is that the resume isn't initially a document.

It is structured information.

A typical CV can contain:

Professional summary
Work experience
Education
Technical and professional skills
Projects
Certifications
Contact information
Additional sections

Separating this information from its visual presentation makes it easier to reuse the same content across different layouts and templates.

Keeping content and presentation separate

This separation creates an interesting development challenge.

Users should be able to change how their CV looks without having to rewrite all of their information.

The application therefore needs to manage the underlying resume data independently from the template responsible for presenting it.

A simplified model might look something like this:

Resume Data
    ↓
Structured Sections
    ↓
Selected Template
    ↓
Rendered CV
    ↓
Final Document

This approach also makes it easier to update individual sections without rebuilding the entire CV manually.

Thinking about ATS-friendly resumes

Visual design isn't the only consideration.

Many job applications pass through applicant tracking workflows, so resume structure and readability also matter.

That creates a balance between providing attractive templates and keeping the resulting document organized and straightforward.

Toolscase CV Builder includes ATS-oriented functionality alongside its resume creation workflow.

AI-assisted CV creation

AI can also be useful during the content-building stage.

Instead of treating AI as a replacement for the user's professional information, it can assist with parts of the resume creation process while the user remains responsible for ensuring that the final information accurately represents their experience.

This becomes particularly useful when users know their experience but need help organizing it into appropriate resume content.

Different users need different resumes

A developer, designer, salesperson, student, and project manager may all need very different CVs.

The underlying sections may be similar, but their priorities are different.

For example, a developer may emphasize technical skills and projects, while someone with extensive professional experience may give more space to employment history.

This is one reason flexible sections and templates are useful in a CV-building system.

Beyond document creation

Resume creation can also connect to the wider job-search process.

Toolscase CV Builder includes functionality around ATS optimization and job-related workflows in addition to the core CV creation experience.

The broader challenge is keeping these capabilities connected without making the basic process of creating a resume unnecessarily complicated.

Try Toolscase CV Builder

You can explore Toolscase CV Builder and its browser-based resume-building features.

For developers who have built document-generation or career-related applications:

What has been the most difficult part of turning structured user data into a consistently formatted document?

Building a Multi-Tool Platform for Everyday Developer and Web Tasks

Muhammad Usman Idrees — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 12:38:38 +0000

Developers and other web users often rely on small utilities throughout the day.

A task might require formatting text, generating something, checking technical information, working with data, or using a security or SEO utility. None of these tasks necessarily needs a large application, but constantly searching for a different website for every small operation can interrupt the workflow.

That was one of the ideas behind Toolscase: bringing a collection of useful browser-based tools into one place.

Why build a multi-tool platform?

Many online utilities solve one very specific problem.

That's useful, but over time users can end up relying on many different websites for relatively small tasks.

A multi-tool platform takes a different approach.

Instead of building an entire product around one small utility, related tools can share the same platform, navigation, interface patterns, and overall experience.

Different tools, different requirements

One of the interesting challenges is that not every utility behaves the same way.

Some tools accept text.

Others require structured input.

Some generate output immediately, while others require additional processing.

Developer, security, SEO, business, generator, and text utilities can all have very different workflows.

The challenge is allowing each tool to do what it needs while still making the overall platform feel consistent.

Keeping small tools simple

A utility should generally make the task easier, not introduce another complicated workflow.

For many browser-based tools, the ideal experience is straightforward:

Open the tool.
Provide the required input.
Configure any necessary options.
Run the operation.
Copy or use the result.

Keeping that interaction simple becomes especially important when many utilities are available within the same platform.

Organizing a growing collection

As the number of tools increases, discovery becomes another problem.

Users need to be able to understand what is available and quickly find the utility relevant to their current task.

Toolscase organizes browser-based tools across areas including:

Developer utilities
Security tools
SEO tools
Business utilities
Generator tools
Text tools

The platform currently brings together dozens of utilities intended for different everyday workflows.

Why browser-based tools?

For small and occasional tasks, installing dedicated software isn't always necessary.

Browser-based utilities can provide quick access from an existing workflow and make it easier to switch between different operations.

Of course, not every task belongs in a browser. More complex or sensitive workflows may require a different approach.

The interesting challenge is identifying which tasks benefit from being lightweight web utilities and keeping those tools focused.

Building for consistency

As Toolscase grows, one of the main development considerations is maintaining consistency across tools.

New utilities should feel like part of the same platform rather than completely unrelated mini-applications.

That means thinking about common interface patterns, input handling, results, errors, navigation, and usability while still respecting the requirements of each individual tool.

Explore Toolscase

You can explore Toolscase and its collection of browser-based utilities.

I'd also be interested in feedback from other developers:

Which small developer or web task do you repeatedly use an online tool for instead of building or installing something locally?

Building a Time Tracker That Goes Beyond Just Counting Hours

Muhammad Usman Idrees — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 12:24:02 +0000

Most time trackers start with a simple idea: start a timer, stop it when the work is finished, and record the duration.

That works for basic tracking, but understanding how working time is actually spent can require much more context.

We have been working on Toolscase Time Tracker, a web-based time tracking and productivity platform designed to provide better visibility into work activity.

The problem with basic time tracking

Knowing that someone worked for several hours doesn't necessarily explain how that time was used.

For individuals and teams, useful questions can include:

How much time was spent working?
Which activities consumed the most time?
Which applications or websites were involved?
How does activity change throughout the working period?
How can tracked information be turned into useful reports?

This turns time tracking from a simple timer problem into a broader productivity-data problem.

What the platform tracks

Toolscase Time Tracker combines time tracking with additional activity and reporting functionality, including:

Work time tracking
Screenshots
Activity monitoring
Application and website tracking
Productivity reporting
AI-generated summaries

The idea is to bring these signals together so that tracked time can have more context than a simple number of hours.

Turning activity into useful information

Collecting activity data isn't particularly useful if users can't understand it afterward.

Reporting is therefore an important part of the workflow.

Instead of treating every recorded event independently, reports can help organize activity into information that is easier to review.

This becomes especially useful when tracking work across longer periods.

Why summaries matter

Detailed activity records can become difficult to review as the amount of tracked information grows.

Summaries provide another way to understand that information.

Toolscase Time Tracker includes AI-assisted summaries designed to help turn recorded work activity into a more concise overview.

The goal isn't simply to collect more data, but to make the collected information easier to understand.

Designing for individuals and teams

Time-tracking requirements can also change depending on who is using the system.

An individual may mainly want visibility into personal productivity.

A team may need reporting and a clearer understanding of how working time is distributed.

This means the interface needs to keep basic time tracking straightforward while still supporting more detailed activity and reporting workflows.

Try Toolscase Time Tracker

You can explore Toolscase Time Tracker and its time tracking and productivity features.

For developers and remote teams:

What information do you find most useful in a time tracker beyond the total number of hours worked?

Building a Browser-Based Toolkit for Image Conversion and Optimization

Muhammad Usman Idrees — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 12:11:07 +0000

Images are a major part of modern websites, but preparing them for different use cases often involves several separate tools.

A developer might need to resize an image, convert its format, compress it for the web, crop it, remove unnecessary metadata, or process multiple images at once.

We have been working on Toolscase Image Tools to bring common image-processing workflows together in a browser-based platform.

Why image processing gets complicated

A simple image upload can lead to very different workflows depending on what the user wants to accomplish.

For example:

Conversion changes the image format.
Compression focuses on reducing file size.
Resizing changes image dimensions.
Cropping changes the visible area.
Optimization prepares images for more efficient web usage.
Bulk processing applies operations across multiple files.

Although these tasks all involve images, each requires a different processing workflow.

What the toolkit provides

Toolscase Image Tools brings together utilities for tasks such as:

Image conversion
Image compression
Image resizing
Image cropping
Image optimization
Image editing
Metadata-related operations
Watermarking
Background removal
Bulk image processing

Having these tools available from one interface makes it easier to move between different image workflows without using a separate application for every operation.

Image formats matter

Different image formats are useful for different situations.

Developers may receive images in one format but need another format for a website, application, download, or other workflow.

Format conversion therefore becomes more useful when it is combined with resizing, compression, and optimization rather than treated as an isolated operation.

Optimizing images for websites

Large images can contribute significantly to the amount of data a webpage needs to transfer.

That makes image preparation an important part of web development.

A typical workflow might involve:

Uploading the original image.
Resizing it to appropriate dimensions.
Converting it to a suitable format.
Compressing or optimizing the output.
Using the resulting image in the website.

Bringing these operations together can make that workflow much simpler.

Handling multiple images

Processing one image manually is manageable.

Processing dozens of images individually becomes repetitive very quickly.

Bulk processing is therefore useful when the same type of operation needs to be applied to multiple files, especially when preparing image collections for websites or other digital projects.

Keeping the interface consistent

As with any multi-tool platform, one of the challenges is keeping the experience predictable.

Conversion, cropping, resizing, compression, and background-related operations have different requirements, but users shouldn't have to relearn the entire interface every time they switch tools.

The goal is to keep common actions familiar while allowing each image tool to expose the options it actually needs.

Try the image tools

You can explore Toolscase Image Tools and the available browser-based image utilities.

For developers working with images:

Which image-processing task takes up the most time in your current web development workflow?

Building a Browser-Based Toolkit for Common PDF Workflows

Muhammad Usman Idrees — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 12:00:58 +0000

Working with PDFs often means jumping between different tools.

One tool converts a PDF, another compresses it, another handles merging or splitting, and more specialized workflows such as OCR, signing, or document protection may require yet another application.

We have been working on Toolscase PDF Tools to bring these common document workflows together in a browser-based platform.

The challenge with PDF processing

PDF files can look simple from a user's perspective, but different operations require very different processing workflows.

For example:

Converting a PDF is different from compressing one.
Merging requires handling multiple input documents.
Splitting requires selecting or extracting specific pages.
OCR involves extracting text from scanned documents or images.
Signing and protection introduce additional document-management requirements.

Building a unified interface means these different workflows need to feel consistent even though the processing behind them can vary significantly.

What the platform handles

Toolscase PDF Tools includes functionality for common PDF and document operations such as:

PDF conversion
PDF compression
Merging multiple PDFs
Splitting PDF documents
PDF editing
Document signing
OCR
Watermarking
PDF protection
Document organization
Document analysis
AI-assisted PDF workflows

The goal is to make these operations accessible from one web-based environment rather than requiring a separate application for each task.

Designing around different workflows

One interesting part of building a PDF toolkit is that not every operation can use exactly the same interface.

Compression may only require uploading a document and selecting an option.

Merging requires multiple files and their ordering.

Splitting requires page-level decisions.

Editing and organization can require interaction with individual pages.

This means the user interface needs to remain familiar while still adapting to the requirements of each operation.

Browser-based access

Making the toolkit web-based also removes the need for users to install a separate desktop application just to perform occasional PDF operations.

A user can open the relevant tool, provide the document, perform the required operation, and retrieve the resulting file through the browser.

This approach is particularly useful when someone only needs a specific PDF operation rather than a complete desktop document suite.

OCR and document workflows

Scanned PDFs introduce another challenge because their visible text may actually be stored as images.

OCR functionality helps extract text from these kinds of documents, making it possible to work with content that would otherwise be difficult to search or process as text.

It also opens the door to additional document-processing and analysis workflows.

Bringing the tools together

The biggest challenge hasn't simply been adding more individual PDF utilities.

It has been making many different document operations feel like parts of the same product.

Navigation, file handling, processing states, errors, and output need to remain understandable even when the underlying operation changes.

That consistency becomes increasingly important as the number of available tools grows.

Try Toolscase PDF Tools

You can explore the Toolscase PDF Tools platform and its available PDF and document-processing utilities.

For developers who have worked with document processing:

What has been the most difficult PDF operation or edge case you've had to handle in a web application?

How We Built a Tool to Convert Existing Websites Into Static Sites

Muhammad Usman Idrees — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 11:50:18 +0000

Converting an existing website into a static site sounds straightforward: download the HTML, save the assets, and deploy the files.

In practice, there is much more to handle.

Pages need to be discovered, internal links need to remain usable, assets need to be collected, images can be optimized, and the final output needs to be structured so that it can actually be deployed as a static website.

We have been working on Toolscase Static Website Generator to simplify this workflow.

What the tool does

The basic workflow starts with an existing website.

The system crawls the website, processes its pages and assets, and creates a static version that can be exported for deployment.

Some of the functionality includes:

Website crawling
Static HTML generation
Asset processing
Image optimization
WebP image conversion
File minification
SEO-related file handling
Static form support
Background processing
Multi-site management
Team roles
ZIP export

Why convert an existing website to static files?

There are situations where developers or website owners may want a deployable static version of an existing site.

Static files can be easier to host and move between hosting environments because the resulting site does not necessarily require the original application's server-side environment for every page request.

However, converting an existing website is different from building a new static site from scratch.

The converter needs to understand the existing site's structure and reproduce the relevant pages and assets in a form suitable for static hosting.

Image and asset optimization

Images can represent a significant portion of a website's transferred data.

As part of the conversion workflow, Toolscase can process images and convert supported images to formats such as WebP.

The tool also includes minification and asset-processing functionality so optimization can happen during the static conversion process instead of requiring a completely separate workflow.

SEO considerations

Generating HTML files alone isn't enough.

A static conversion workflow also needs to consider URLs, internal navigation, and SEO-related files. These are important details when creating a static version of a website that was originally served dynamically.

Exporting the result

Once processing is complete, the generated website can be exported as a ZIP package.

This makes it possible to take the generated files and use them within an appropriate static deployment workflow.

Try it

You can try the Toolscase Static Website Generator and see how the conversion workflow works.

I'd be interested to hear from developers who work with static sites or website optimization.

What is the biggest problem you've encountered when converting an existing dynamic website into a static one?