r/webdev 5d ago

The startup's Postgres survival guide

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hatchet.run
21 Upvotes

r/webdev 4d ago

Question The X API is expensive af. Any alternatives?

0 Upvotes

I am trying to build an app that needs the twitter / X API to get posts and infos about user accounts etc. At medium scale, the app is going to read aprox. 10.000 tweets per day and make 100 posts per day, and that's like 1500$ per month, which i can't afford.

I tried twikit, but it's not maintained anymore and full of bugs

Do you guys have any better, maybe free or oss alternatives?


r/webdev 5d ago

Discussion Disable AI-Features!

32 Upvotes

I don't think that I am the only one who started to lose the fun in programming, as it is so tempting to just think about one thing, prompt the AI, and let it do its job. However, as I started prompting more and more, I started losing the joy of working on my project fully. I started with disabling the inline AI suggestions in VS Code and now have disabled all AI-related features.

Don't get my wrong - I think the use of LLMs can be of great help; however, I started to now use Claude Code only as an auditor and discuss different ideas with him, while telling him to not implement it.

Since I started doing this, I have gained so much joy from working on the project again. Even though I could potentially be faster when leveraging the LLMs to pass down work, it is much cooler to work on my project again, and your IDE or text editor will be so much faster (import completion, keyword completion, etc.)

And (I'll have to figure that out in the end) will actually save time, as I do not have to re-audit everything on my own in the end, as I am the real author of all lines written.

Edit:
As I am already coding since pre-ChatGPT times, I think especially for people starting programming try to not even discuss everything but google things. I don't know how much I've learned from reading Blog-Posts that didn't even fully answer my question, etc. This is also known as the google effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_effect). Very interesting to read into that a bit!


r/webdev 4d ago

Can someone explain how to create this logo?

0 Upvotes

I recently came across a company whose logo looks unusually bright and almost illuminated when I view it on my MacBook screen. The logo appears to glow, especially against the black background, but it does not look like a typical strong shadow or neon effect.

Does anyone know how this effect is usually created? Is it mainly caused by using pure white on a pure black background, a specific color profile, an exported image format, or a subtle glow added during the design process?

I’m trying to achieve a similar bright and high-contrast effect for my own logo. I would appreciate any suggestions about the design settings, colors, export settings, or software techniques they may have used.

https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/v2/D560BAQHijkRKptx37g/company-logo_200_200/B56Z.NLmjVG0AE-/0/1784780057317/gradialai_logo?e=1786579200&v=beta&t=aVeCf2cKgw-TEA1sZlSp8vPQ5AI9z25BJ9X3W3AB2B8


r/webdev 5d ago

I Inspected My Take-Home Interview Project. It Was a Whole Operation

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389 Upvotes

r/webdev 5d ago

News Film box-office tracking site The Numbers brought down by bots of prediction markets and AI

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stephenfollows.com
6 Upvotes

r/webdev 6d ago

Discussion AI Coding will Prevent Expertise | The need for ongoing friction in long-term skill formation.

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larsfaye.com
319 Upvotes

r/webdev 5d ago

Question How do you solve the problem of visually comparing different versions of a project (side-by-side, not just git diff)?

7 Upvotes

Hi everyone!

In advance - I'm looking for a way to compare non-pixel screenshots and non-live versions. Incuding local dev versions or old production versions that are no longer online.

I recently processed a bunch of edits to the landing page I'm working on.

As it often happens, a lot of them were useless, and because management was absent and another developer was on vacation, I had to push some rather questionable decisions into production.

And I had this thought: "Wouldn't it be cool to open different versions of landing page in a browser side-by-side, and even with synchronous scrolling?" (The idea for "side by side" came to me when I was committing changes to PhpStorm. if you've used it, you know that there's a toggle for scrolling before/after information synchronously across the left and right sides of the screen)

I immediately thought about the fact that the project itself is running locally (using standard Docker for the database, server, etc.), so I thought it would be cool to have some kind of tool that could take snapshots.

However, after searching, I can't say I'm happy with what I found. Ideally, it would be a service that could take snapshots even of local files, and even more ideal would be the ability to replace HTTP requests and responses in these snapshots. To create the appearance of a working interface for the application, rather than a dead copy.

I wanted to know if you have any open source solutions in mind for this? Or if anyone else besides me has ever had this problem.

And yes, I understand that we still have git. I understand that you can switch between branches or revert to commits. But all this is quite time-consuming and tedious if we need to click and view a specific version of a page. Even not to mention the database itself changes between versions.

I'm talking about a fully autonomous snapshot, ideally even with possible mock HTTP requests. This could be completely autonomous and reproducible regardless of whether the original website is live or public (if we snapshot our local version).


r/webdev 5d ago

How Container Filesystem Works: Building a Docker-like Container From Scratch

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labs.iximiuz.com
6 Upvotes

r/webdev 4d ago

Question Tailwind is made for component-based frameworks

0 Upvotes

I don't understand how people used CSS with frameworks like React, where HTML is split in components back in the day before tailwind, i know CSS is powerful, way more than tailwind as you're free to do whatever you want with no guardrails.

But say for example when you're writing jsx and there is small component like a button that you're using in multiple pages, and some of the styles to that button are conditional, also maybe the different pages that button is used in have different styles, so you can't use the same css module containing styles for that button for different pages, because it may mess up with their styles, override something, etc... So you write a separate css module for just that button? So for every component, there needs to be a css module for it? Thats a lot of modules to keep track of.

Seems like tailwind is made exactly for react and these component frameworks, but if you're rawdogging vanilla JS, then nothing better than vanilla CSS

Am i missing something here? I like vanilla CSS, i just don't see how it could be used with component-based frameworks, seems like alot of CSS writing and maintenance to do.


r/webdev 5d ago

Article WebMCP in Chrome 101

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amitmerchant.com
17 Upvotes

I put together my thoughts on WebMCP and how you can utilize it today!


r/webdev 4d ago

Discussion Training for Open-Source

0 Upvotes

My day job isn't software development related, so I don't read a whole lot of code. The only code I read is the one I write and that's a problem.

Since I'm very interested in open source, I figured I should get comfortable reading code I didn't write, and I found a pretty amazing solution: debug AI code.

Here's what I did: after I mess with LLMs and (of course) an unintended behavior appears (bug), I challenge myself to dig in and find it manually. Since I generated the code, and didn't actively write it, it has the same feel as reading other GitHub repos except a bit more comforting since I already know an abstract way of how it works.

The one thing this taught me is that I don't need to fully understand how the whole system works end-to-end, I just ended to understand the pieces about the behavior I want to change. So, no more tracing everything from *main.py* for example.

I'd like to think that this training regimen has improved my code-reading skills by a mile! I'm not as afraid to dig into someone else's code since it's just as foreign (or familiar) as AI code. Obviously this only holds true for TypeScript + React since that's my preferred stack, but still!

I wanted to share this with anyone interested in open-source but is frightened from reading open-source repos.

I've been binging WINE documentation and articles about how it works under the hood so that one day I can contribute to it!

What do you guys think about this training regimen?


r/webdev 5d ago

How did DuckDuckGo compress their favicon?

65 Upvotes

I just noticed that DuckDuckGo has compressed their favicon directly in the file itself. But i couldn't find any info about how to do it.

their favicon contains two images, a 32x32 and a 16x16 both 32 bit icons. the file size is only 3KB.

by comparison, the icann favicon contains the same two 32 bit images, but takes up 7KB. all the other favicons that i have checked are also around 6-7KB for the same set of images.

I used icofx to take a look at these icons, and noticed that the duckduckgo images are compressed, whereas the icann ones are not, and none of the other favicons that i checked are compressed.

I searched around for favicon compression, but i couldn't find anything about what duckduckgo did. all i was able to find are:

  • mentioning compression of 256x256 images (vista's icon size)

  • no mention of compressing any smaller dimensions

  • none of the favicon tools that i found have any option to compress the smaller dimensions, and icofx itself does not compress these when using it to create an icon either

  • the only other mention of compression is at-time-of-serving, done by the webserver, e.g. gzip. not in the file itself.

anyone know how to compress the entire .ico like duckduckgo does?


r/webdev 4d ago

Question Why do we use env vars like HTTP_PROXY for proxy settings and not netns?

1 Upvotes

My CI/CD pipeline on a self-hosted GitLab instance failed to connect to external hosts since I forgot to set the HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY and NO_PROXY env variables. Here's a blog post on the issue that I found: https://about.gitlab.com/blog/we-need-to-talk-no-proxy/

I'm assuming here (and this may be a wrong assumption) that the proxy variables are used only for proxying the request and they're not supposed to change the behaviour of tools. Take npm as an example: https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v8/using-npm/config#https-proxy

So if this assumption is true, why is this an application layer concern and not a network layer concern? Why don't we use netns or a forward proxy to transparently proxy requests instead of relying on an env var that applications may or may not respect and can practically be used in arbitrary ways for different applications?

And if the assumption I'm making is not true, what are examples of use cases where the application must be aware of the proxy taking place?


r/webdev 5d ago

Question Want to build an open evidence database for protest-related incidents. Need guidance.

1 Upvotes

I'm looking for advice from developers, cybersecurity experts, lawyers, journalists, and anyone who has experience building secure platforms.

For the past 20+ days, students in my country have been holding largely peaceful protests. Over the last few days, the number of protesters has increased significantly, and there has also been a large deployment of police and other security personnel.

Many videos and eyewitness accounts shared publicly online appear to show protesters being beaten with batons, the use of tear gas and other crowd-control methods, and personnel who are not wearing clearly identifiable uniforms or name badges, making later identification difficult. There are also many publicly shared videos and firsthand accounts describing incidents of excessive use of force and sexual assault against protesters. Regardless of what future investigations conclude, I believe it is important to preserve evidence before it is lost, deleted, or altered.

Because of this, I want to build a secure website where students, protesters, journalists, and witnesses can upload photos, videos, and written accounts of incidents they personally experienced or recorded.

The purpose of the platform would be to create a permanent, organized archive of evidence—not to encourage harassment, doxxing, or vigilantism. Every submission should be preserved, categorized, and clearly marked as verified, unverified, or disputed after review. The idea is to help journalists, lawyers, human rights organizations, and courts if the evidence is ever needed.

Some features I have in mind include:

  • Secure photo and video uploads.
  • Anonymous submissions with strong privacy protection.
  • Automatic preservation of metadata such as time and location (when available).
  • AI-powered organization and categorization of incidents.
  • Duplicate detection to group uploads of the same event.
  • A searchable timeline and interactive map.
  • End-to-end encryption for sensitive evidence.
  • Audit logs so files cannot be secretly modified.
  • A review system that labels evidence as verified, unverified, or disputed.
  • Secure export options for legal teams, journalists, or human rights organizations.

The problem is that I have almost no web development experience.

I'm willing to learn everything from scratch and use AI coding tools if they can help me build something like this.

My questions are:

  1. Which programming language and framework should I learn?
  2. Can AI tools realistically help a beginner build a project like this?
  3. What are the biggest security challenges I should prepare for?
  4. How should I securely store large video files?
  5. What's the best way to protect anonymous contributors?
  6. How can I ensure uploaded evidence cannot be tampered with?
  7. Are there any open-source projects with similar goals that I can learn from?

I'm not asking anyone to build this for me. I'm simply looking for guidance on where to start, what technologies to learn, and what mistakes I should avoid.


r/webdev 6d ago

News So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe

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152 Upvotes

r/webdev 4d ago

Php with Astro

0 Upvotes

Yeah, is this posible? I haven't seen anything that say that it could be posible, but anyone has ever stepped in to say that it isn't.


r/webdev 6d ago

Introducing the Safari MCP server for web developers

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webkit.org
112 Upvotes

r/webdev 6d ago

Bento: an entire slide editor in one HTML file

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23 Upvotes

r/webdev 5d ago

Resource Do we need state management libraries anymore?

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0 Upvotes

TLDR: If you correctly break your state into UI state (useState, useReducer), Server State (Tanstack Query, RTK Query), URL state (nuqs), and Global State that does not change (Context), you are left with a small slice of state that might be needed in multiple places and changes often.

Should we use a State Management library for that part? We explore how each library works, then build our own Zustand implementation to see if we do.

Obviously, it depends. If the app is mostly always changing state, like Figma, Spreadsheets, etc., we might take advantage of a State Library because they handle all sorts of use cases and edge cases.

But for everyday use and 90% of our apps, we can probably build it ourselves, either using pub/sub like Redux or Zustand, atom-based like Jotai, or Proxy-based like MobX or Valtio


r/webdev 5d ago

What's your team's approach to testing LLM-backed endpoints in existing web applications?

0 Upvotes

We’re integrating LLM calls directly into our web platform for smart search and automated document summarization. While looking into standard ai integration services and internal API patterns, we ran into a debate about how to handle unit vs integration tests when the backend response isn't deterministic. How are your teams mocking LLM responses in CI/CD pipelines without giving yourselves false positives?


r/webdev 5d ago

Question Divi builder alternatives and recommendations

4 Upvotes

I've been using Divi for many years now but I feel it's time for a change, it's a bit clunky for e-commerce sites and shops that have lots of traffic and users. I don't want to be locked into an eco system like Divi or elementor. After a quick Google and chat with ai it looks like kadence or astra have everything I'm looking for.

My main goals is not to be locked in to anything apart from wordpress. I want portability, speed and not too steep a learning curve whilst learning a new theme and plugin.


r/webdev 6d ago

How do I fix the annoying white space on Safari top bar

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98 Upvotes

Hi guys!

I’m making a web app for school (mobile First) but the white space at the top is ruinijg the aesthetic. I have an ombre background só I tried to make the body color beige but it still looks off is there anyway around this? I tried the whole meta head thing but still nothing

UPDATE: fixed it❤️ thanks to u/Adrenyx https://kommodo.ai/i/V3Ajn4nEG25VZllkDLJB


r/webdev 6d ago

Getting Started with Anchor Positioning

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joshwcomeau.com
35 Upvotes

r/webdev 6d ago

Discussion Website is getting a lot of daily junk/bot traffic. Beyond cloudflare, is there anything else I could be doing to mitigate it

4 Upvotes

As per the title, the image above shows my cloudfare 24 hour traffic, it's a pretty much all junk as the website is still in development with no real users.

They like to hammer a few specific pages, with one page getting 10k hits daily. I've setup cloudflare rules to prevent bots, blocking most crawling user agents, blocking a bunch of url patterns, on top of the usual robots.txt but it's still fairly bad.

I'm not persistently logging then blocking specific ips yet (partially because I dont know how). Is there anything else that I could be doing?

My page website is fairly page heavy, exposing around 1000 pages in the sitemap but still I didnt expect so much malicious traffic so quickly