Budding programmers usually go through a phase of intense experimentation, trying their hand at personal projects to gain experience and skills. Or simply to lay the foundations – why not? – of small, perhaps successful, digital businesses.
Fair enough. "Getting your hands dirty" is a fundamental exercise in a programmer's development, a kind of apprenticeship before later tackling structured, funded projects in which you are no longer a "one-man band" but part of a team – when you finally enter the world of work.
After all, as we described in this recent article, it is an approach common to many developers, including world-famous ones.
So we asked ourselves:
Why not "combine business with pleasure" by suggesting real "programming exercises" to beginners (some of them, as you will read, rather creative) that help them practise while having fun, but also lay the foundations for something useful and potentially "sellable"? Or to build up a stock of their own code, anticipating future wishes and needs, for personal or professional purposes they can rely on?
The web is full of free resources to draw on, of course, but apart from the fact that copying is almost never ethical or legal, it isn't the same thing. Think of the satisfaction – not always convenient or practical, admittedly, but "never say never" – of creating something 100% unique!
So here are our 21 interesting web development ideas for beginners!
1) Build a single-page website
A website of this kind is a single page holding all the content in one long vertical page, letting users scroll through it without loading other pages and offering a smooth, continuous experience. It is particularly suitable for portfolios and simple company sites with a linear narrative.
How? There are many ways. The simplest require installing a CMS such as WordPress and a suitable theme. Less simple but certainly more interesting is using ready-made HTML+CSS templates, for example the "Conquer" template, which comes with a series of editable layouts.
This project presents a range of challenges developers often face in real scenarios, so it pushes you to experiment with techniques such as floats and Flexbox to refine your use of CSS layout.
2) Build a login page
Here's a great way to sharpen your JavaScript skills: in this project you will design a website's login bar, where users enter their username and password to access the site.
Since many sites require authentication, learning this skill will come in very handy in future projects and web applications.
3) Build a landing page for a product or service
The simplest way to create a landing page is to use a website builder such as Wix or Squarespace, or preferably the aforementioned WordPress with a visual builder such as Elementor. Although these platforms offer customisable ready-made templates, it can hardly be called a good exercise for coders, and the result may be unoriginal and not very personal.
It would be better to follow a path similar to the one described in our first point, building the page as a single-page site without a menu but "cutting your teeth" on HTML and CSS. It will be harder work, but you will gain skills and experience that are far more valuable on the job market than those of the classic "WordPress developer".
4) Build a Giphy site
Giphy is an online platform that lets users search for, share and discover animated GIFs. It is widely used on social media, in chats and in emails to express emotions and reactions and make communication more dynamic and fun.
Why not create a site built around this tool?
Giphy actually offers a service for this purpose. Using its APIs, you can build a web application with a search box where users can search for and view specific and trending GIFs.
5) Build a quiz game
Although learning JavaScript may seem simple, applying it in practice brings challenges.
Hence the idea of developing an interactive quiz game in this well-known language, letting users give multiple-choice answers and see the correct one. Building it will give you the chance to test and improve your skills, tackling logical complexity and getting deeper into data handling and DOM manipulation, with the freedom to adapt the game's complexity to your skill level.
6) Program a to-do list
JavaScript can also be used to develop web applications for organising daily task lists. The idea here is to build a dynamic user interface where users can easily add, remove or categorise tasks.
To build an application like this, it is also essential to be comfortable with HTML and CSS.
7) Get a page to rank well on Google
In today's digital landscape SEO is crucial to make sure a site is visible in organic search results. Developers therefore need a basic understanding of web design and SEO strategies.
So why not practise by setting yourself goals like this? This approach not only improves your overall competence but pushes you to think about needs and problems (essential for anyone who wants to put an entrepreneurial vision into practice).
And on the technical side too, it pushes you to work on load speed across devices, as well as usability. And much more, of course.
8) Draw with code
This idea takes inspiration from "Infinite Rainbow" on CodePen and uses JavaScript to animate HTML and CSS elements in the browser.
Using advanced libraries such as oCanvas, Canviz and Raphaël, it offers a unique opportunity to learn JavaScript's graphics features: a valuable skill for enriching static web pages with dynamic visual elements, improving their look and interactivity.
9) Recreate Google Search
Why not recreate the Google home page? Why not practise by building a web page that looks like it without worrying about functionality – adding the Google logo, the search icons, the text box, the links to Gmail and the image buttons? In short, everything you see on Google's home page?
It may seem pointless, but it will sharpen many skills, especially UX optimisation. And if you want to do things properly, read and follow the next point.
10) Recreate the SERPs
If we recreate the home page, why not the SERPs too?
It is just as instructive to try developing a web page that shows search engine results pages similar to Google's, displaying at least ten results. Here it's important to add a navigation arrow at the bottom so users can move on to the next pages, enriching the search experience.
This exercise, like the previous one, is relatively easy if you have a good knowledge of HTML and CSS. Less so if you want to add functionality, which means writing server-side code and configuring a database, for example with PHP and MySQL.
11) Build a tribute page
The idea we propose is to build a page celebrating someone you love, such as a person you admire or a beloved pet.
This kind of project is a great opportunity to improve your HTML and CSS skills.
12) Build a survey
Why not develop a survey or questionnaire form?
It isn't complicated if you know a bit of HTML5, and it lets you collect feedback from your target audience – for example on the usability or features of the survey itself.
But be careful: this may involve collecting personal data (such as name, age, email and phone number), which could expose you to penalties from the data protection authority if it isn't accompanied by a proper privacy notice, all the more so if you use cookies. If you decide to include such fields, it's better to run the survey for internal or family use.
In general, always be careful about privacy in any digital project.
13) Develop an exit plugin
The task here is to create a widget or plugin that shows an exit pop-up when the user is about to leave a web page.
This technique again uses JavaScript, tracking how long the user stays on the site or when the current window loses focus. Some exit plugins can be very original – it's all down to your imagination.
14) Add social sharing buttons
This project challenges you to implement social sharing buttons on static websites, overcoming the difficulties you meet outside environments such as WordPress.
Again using JavaScript, you can insert these buttons into your site dynamically, offering a flexible way to make it easier to share content on social media.
15) Build a countdown
Why not develop a countdown timer or clock on a web page that updates every second? Using JavaScript you can make the page more interactive by adding buttons to start, stop or pause the timer, making it not only functional but also visually engaging.
Web clocks like this are often used to build anticipation for the launch of a new site. Using practice as an excuse, you can make your own to reuse later (adapting its graphics) when you start developing sites for your clients – if, of course, that's the path you intend to take.
16) Build a chat
Developing a real-time chat can be very demanding, as we well know, but it would be a great exercise for your programming skills.
You could actually speed things up by developing a simple chat application using WebSocket, a technology that enables real-time two-way communication between client and server.
The programmer should design a simple user interface for sending and displaying messages. On the server side you need to manage connections, receive messages from one user and pass them on to the other connected users.
This exercise helps you understand the dynamics of real-time web applications and client-server interactions. And besides, how great would it be to build your very own chat?
17) Build an image carousel
The idea is to implement an image slider that lets you browse through photos.
How? By using HTML and CSS to structure and style the layout, and JavaScript (often with libraries such as jQuery or frameworks such as React or Vue.js) to add interactivity, such as navigation and carousel animation. CSS can be used to make the carousel responsive, adapting to different devices. Libraries such as Slick or Swiper can simplify implementation, offering advanced features with less code.
18) Build a light/dark theme switch
It's not just a trend but a useful feature for any website or app today, because it can reduce devices' energy consumption (default themes are light and tend to use more energy).
Here too it's a matter of handling JavaScript carefully to manage the theme change and CSS to define the styles of the page's various elements (usually <div>s).
19) Develop an AI image recognition app
The last three ideas we want to give you are more topical because they integrate artificial intelligence, so the work involved is configuration and integration rather than pure programming. Everything happens through the APIs provided.
Because, as we explained in this article, developing a model (an extremely complex task) is one thing; using a ready-made one (much simpler!) is another, and that's what we'll do here.
Creating a page that lets you upload an image to be passed to the AI is relatively simple, and Clarifai and Google Cloud Vision are just some of the APIs available for this.
The exercise we suggest could also include displaying the results of the analysis and classification carried out by the AI. For example, if a user uploads a photo of a cat, they could get back a text describing its breed, colour, what it is doing and so on.
20) Develop an AI tool for comment sentiment analysis
Another idea concerns developing an application that analyses the sentiment of users' comments. IBM Watson offers APIs for sentiment analysis.
The app should let users enter text to analyse (or a URL, scraping the text first) and get a positive, negative or neutral sentiment as output.
This exercise brings machine learning into the site's features, offering hands-on experience with natural language processing (NLP).
21) Develop an AI chatbot
The last challenge we propose is creating a chatbot using JavaScript and an AI platform such as Google Dialogflow or Microsoft Bot Framework.
The bot should be able to answer frequently asked questions, guide users through a website or provide customer support.
We have written an excellent step-by-step guide to creating an AI chatbot with the OpenAI APIs in Visual Studio, and you can find it at this link.
In conclusion
Whatever web projects you are working on or planning to work on, remember that it's important to choose them according to your skill level, starting with the simplest and moving on to more complex tasks that require more advanced knowledge of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and, for more skilled developers, dynamic languages.
We hope our ideas have helped you practise and inspired you to become a programmer, if you aren't one yet.
Or, if you already are, an even better one.
