Do you write blogs? Have you ever struggled to create cover images for your blogs?
Well, I did. So I have made a tool that will help you create awesome cover images for your blogs quickly.
π The problem
I started blogging a few months back. It's one of the best decisions I have ever made. But every time I wanted to write a post, I had to create and edit a cover image for it. I mean I love creating creative cover images but sometimes I feel I just spend too much time designing it.
And then I saw these comments on my posts.
I use canva. It's a nice tool. But I thought I need something minimal so that creating those cover images won't be any hassle. Coincidently I just started learning react. I knew some basics and I thought why not implement my knowledge of react and make something out of it. Also, it might help someone else too. And that's how I came up with the idea of this project.
π The process
I started working on this as a fun project. I had an exact visualization of what I wanted to create.
So I first created a design of a cover image that can be used as the template user can edit. I asked my self what things I would like to add or what can I do to make the cover image more appealing. And I started playing with it. It was fun. After spending a lot of time, solving problems and finding solutions, this is what I came up with the first build.
π¦ The final outcome
I shared it on Twitter and Linkedin and I got a really good response from the developer community. I always wanted to contribute to open source. There are multiple ways to contribute and one of which is creating open-source projects. I open-sourced it. This is my first open-source project with react.
And within a few hours, I got my first pull request. Asish Raju made his first open-source contribution by contributing to my project. He added a few more customizable options and refactored the code.
For the first time, I was on the other side of a project. I learned how to manage pull requests, review code, and merged his pull request. Open Source Guides is a great resource to learn.
Features
Then I improved it little by little and added some more features. Here are a few noteworthy features of CoverView.
- π Create awesome cover images for your blogs quickly and easily
- π Choose different colors for background, foreground, border, and text
- β¨ Choose from 15+ different background patterns
- π¨βπ» Add dev icons and author name for personal branding
- πΎ Download cover images in
.png
as well as.jpeg
format
I just had a lot of fun making this. You might not be able to create a lot more creative images But having a nice cover is always better than having some random image or no cover image at all.
So check out CoverView
Conclusion
The important lesson I learned while building this is that you don't need to learn a language or framework completely to start making projects. You can start applying while learning it. I feel this way we can learn from our mistakes and understand the importance of one concept over others.
I keep writing about the things I learned and applied. So you can connect with me on Twitter, Github or Linkedin. Also, subscribe to my newsletter and stay up-to-date with my latest blog posts.
β‘ Happy learning!
Latest comments (12)
Great Idea. Are we looking for a upcoming feature of uploading custom image background images too ?
Thanks. Yes. Its work in progress.
It looks very nice
Thank you. It's clean and minimal.
Amazing !!!
Thank you!
Cool πππ
Thank you
Oh wow cool tool.
Than you so much
Superb manβ€οΈ
Thank you π