Introducing Frontend Mentor - Supercharge your front-end skills by building real projects

During the summer I had an idea that I thought would help people improve their front-end skills.

There are so many incredible sites and services out there for helping people learn to code. Companies like General Assembly, where I teach in London, and sites like freeCodeCamp do an amazing job at teaching people from the ground up.

But, I wanted to create a resource for people who already knew some HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Not a step-by-step course, or code along, but a hands-off, project-based resource that emulates a real-life workflow as much as possible.

So, I'd like to introduce you to Frontend Mentor.

I've had a mini-site up for a few months to test the idea and get feedback. But now it's full-steam ahead with a new brand and full re-design of the site.

Challenges on Frontend Mentor

For the challenges, I've created fictional brands to build the designs around. This helps each challenge mimic a real-life workflow. It's like building a site for an actual client!

The challenges include mobile and desktop designs, starter code (including optimised assets). A front-end style guide is also provided, which includes colours, fonts etc.

Here’s a screenshot of the desktop preview for one of the challenges:

And the mobile preview:

If you would like to take a challenge, simply download a starter code from the site and you're away. I've decided to keep the starter code as downloads, instead of using a browser-based editor. This is because I want people to use the text editor and tools that they're most comfortable with.

Plans for the future

Over the coming weeks, I'm going to be adding new challenges to the site. I'll build out a proper /challenges index page to allow for filtering etc.

I'm also thinking about the different types of challenges to offer on Frontend Mentor. I like the thought of having smaller components for quicker challenges and even multi-page sites for people who want a real challenge.

I'll be adding some challenges that involve a bit of JavaScript as well. One of my goals is to offer ‘Bring Your Own Frontend’ (BYOF) challenges. For these challenges, Frontend Mentor would provide the designs and a documented public API. People can then choose which JavaScript library/framework to practice with.

Please give your feedback and share it around

This is the absolute beginning for Frontend Mentor, so please do let me know your thoughts. There are so many different directions I could take this in and I'd love to hear your ideas.

Feel free to join the Slack community on the site as well to get help on the challenges and to help others out.

Also, follow Frontend Mentor (@frontendmentor) on Twitter for the latest updates.

I look forward to hearing everyone’s feedback! Please share the site with anyone who you think it could help 🙌

Comments

[brandon_wallace]

Nice website Matt. It is a great idea. One of the guru level projects should be free in my opinion.

[Matt Studdert]

Thanks a lot for your feedback, Brandon! I'm delighted to hear you like the idea! 🙂

[Maria Isabel Lopez]

this is a great idea!

[Matt Studdert]

Thanks, Maria! I hope you enjoy the challenges!

[Bolarinwa Owuogba]

This is such a wonderful idea

[Matt Studdert]

Thanks a lot, I'm glad you like the site!

[John Afolayan]

I'm very glad I stumbled upon this. It's a really good project. 👍

[Matt Studdert]

I'm really happy you like it, John! I hope you find the challenges useful 🙂

[Fabio Rosado]

This looks like a pretty awesome site. Once hacktoberfest finishes I am going to go ahead and take part of these challenges :D

[Matt Studdert]

Awesome! Look forward to having you involved in the challenges 👍What have you been working on so far in hacktoberfest?

[Fabio Rosado]

At the moment I have been working on two PRs for a project that I am a maintainer, plus reviewing and merging PRs haha

The project it’s called opsdroid and it’s a chat-ops bot

[Matt Studdert]

Ah awesome! Good work mate 👍 Enjoy the rest of Hacktoberfest and I look forward to having you give one of the Frontend Mentor challenges a go!

[John Bull]

It looks amazing! A hearty congratulations on this.

[Matt Studdert]

Thanks a lot John 🙂Feels great to have it out in the wild finally! Hope you find it useful 👍

[John Bull]

Truth be told I started working on something similar about a month ago. So I'm glad I'm not alone in thinking UI focused training and practice is valuable. I love what you have done here!

[Matt Studdert]

Ah awesome! Yeah, I think it's really valuable. Would love to see what you've built when it's ready. Feel free to get in touch whenever as well to talk more 👍

[John Bull]

Thanks very much! I will keep you posted. :)

[Olimpio]

It's an amazing project... Keep up...

[Matt Studdert]

Thanks! 🙂

[Rahul Mourya]

Thank you Sensei. This is gold for me (/resources). ✨🔥

[Matt Studdert]

Awesome! I've found those resources very useful over the years. Will be adding more soon too!

[Kelvin Wangonya]

Great resource. I've been looking for something like this. Awesome Job Matt.

[Matt Studdert]

Thanks Kinyanjui! Really happy that you like it. Hope you enjoy doing the challenges! 👍

[Joe Beretta]

Cool project. Like it! ⚡⚡⚡

[Matt Studdert]

Thanks Joe! 🙌

[Sylvester Nkeze]

I am definitely trying this out. Awesome indeed. By the way, did you design the illustrations yourself? I do know how to use corel draw but i have very minimal knowledge of how to create illustrations like the one in the huddle site

[Matt Studdert]

Hey Sylvester! Really happy to hear you'll try out the challenges 🙂

The illustrations for the huddle site are done by Katerina at unDraw. They're beautiful illustrations and can be used completely for free. It's an amazing resource!

[Sylvester Nkeze]

Wow. Thanks a lot @matt . You are a life saver

[kurisutofu]

It looks really nice and it's a very good idea! I am looking forward to checking it this weekend!

[Matt Studdert]

That's awesome! Remember to tweet to @frontendmentor when you're done. Would love to see your solution! 🙂

[juniusfree]

This is great! We need more coding exercises like this.

I hope you can add the solution in the future.

I'm also doing the coding exercises from frontloops.io.

[Matt Studdert]

Hey! 👋

Glad you like it. Adding solutions is definitely something that can be done in the future. Great to see you've joined the Slack community. We can chat more about it there 🙂

Frontloops looks like an awesome site too!

[Hashim Warren]

I love this! Well needed.

[Matt Studdert]

Thanks Hashim! 🙌

[ADONIS SIMO]

Yeah great idea !!! specially to help back-end dev like me to improve their skills. I suggest you to add a feature like a forum, but i a special way, like a forum per challenge in which users will discuss about the current challege.
Are you looking for collaborator to add features in the site ? I am available. ;-)

[Matt Studdert]

Hey! Thanks for the feedback. Will be looking to build out a platform in the near future, so collaborators will definitely be welcome! 🙌

Please feel free to sign up to the Slack community where everyone can talk about ideas 🙂