I Built a Website Full of Free Developer Tools — Here’s What I Learned

I Built a Website Full of Free Developer Tools — Here’s What I Learned

I’ve always liked small tools.

A QR generator.
An image compressor.
A file converter.
A color picker.

Individually, these tools solve tiny problems. But when you need one of them, you usually end up searching Google, opening multiple websites, dealing with annoying pop-ups, or wondering whether your files are being uploaded somewhere.

So I decided to build something of my own.

Meet Toolbantu

I’m building Toolbantu, a collection of simple, free online tools designed to solve everyday problems quickly.

The idea is simple:

Open the tool → do the task → get the result.

No complicated setup. No unnecessary features.

Some of the tools include image-related utilities, converters, QR tools, and other small productivity tools.

Why did I build it?

Honestly, I wanted to see how far I could take a simple idea.

Instead of only building tutorials and small experiments, I wanted to create something that people could actually use.

That meant thinking about more than just writing code.

I had to think about:

• UI/UX
• Performance
• Mobile responsiveness
• SEO
• Accessibility
• Page structure
• Search intent
• Deployment
• Indexing
• Analytics
• Backlinks
• And, of course, fixing things that break at 2 AM 😅

The interesting part wasn't writing the code

The biggest lesson I've learned is that building a website and building a useful product are two different things.

You can write clean code and still have nobody use your website.

You can have a beautiful UI and still have terrible SEO.

You can get traffic and still have users leave immediately.

So I've started looking at every tool from the user's perspective:

What problem does this solve?

Why would someone search for it?

Can they understand the tool immediately?

Can they complete their task in a few seconds?

These questions have changed how I build things.

I'm also learning SEO along the way

One of the most interesting parts of this project has been learning how search engines discover and understand websites.

I've been working on things like:

• Individual landing pages for tools
• Better titles and descriptions
• Structured URLs
• Sitemap optimization
• Internal linking
• Search-focused content
• Backlinks
• Performance improvements

And I've learned something important:

SEO isn't just about adding keywords.

It's about making a genuinely useful page that matches what someone is looking for.

What's next?

Toolbantu is still a work in progress.

I'm planning to keep adding useful tools, improving existing ones, and experimenting with different ways to make the website faster and easier to use.

I'm also documenting the journey because I think there's something valuable about showing the process—not just the final result.

Maybe Toolbantu becomes a big project.

Maybe it stays a small collection of useful utilities.

Either way, I'm learning a lot by building it.

And that's the main reason I started.

If you're interested, you can check out Toolbantu here:

Toolbantu

I'd love to hear what developers think: What's one tiny online tool you use regularly that you wish was better?