The new Frontend Mentor site is live! 🎉

I’ve been so excited in the run-up to launching the new site for Frontend Mentor, which I’m so happy to say happened this week!

Over the summer I tested an idea based on a specific premise:

Once people learn the foundations of a programming language, the key to improving is often building and learning through repetition. The more you code, the more issues you come up against, the faster you improve.

The problem is, there aren’t many resources out there to practice with a real-life workflow of working to a design.

I’ve seen the pattern time and time again at General Assembly, where I teach web development in London. Once students become competent developers they then struggle to find projects to build to keep practicing on.

Some people use Dribbble for inspiration (which is still a great route!) or download a free HTML & CSS template to try and re-build it. But neither of these strategies emulate a true designer-developer style handover process.

So, I quickly created a small site with 4 challenges on that had designs to work to. The feedback I got was incredible, which has led me to seriously pursue this idea and build a new site, including new challenges.

I enlisted the help of a friend to do the branding and a full re-design of the site, which is what you see before you today!

The process on Frontend Mentor

Each challenge includes starter code, which you download on the site. The project includes mobile & desktop designs, assets and a front-end style guide for colours, fonts etc.

It is designed to be extremely hands off. No step-by-step guides or tutorials. Just you, some designs and your text editor. As it would be in the real world!

If you need some help there’s a Slack community where you can post questions and get feedback from others.

Once you’re finished you can also post your solution to Slack or on social networks, like Twitter.

We all learn by seeing each other’s solutions to the same problem. There will be great value in everyone sharing their code!

Get involved in the community

I would love Frontend Mentor to become a place where developers can practice and learn from each other.

If you’re trying to improve your front-end skills please sign up to the Slack community. You can get an invite on the Frontend Mentor site by filling in the form.

Happy coding! 🙂