Frontend Mentor March 2022 review
Happy 1st of the month! I hope you’ve had an excellent first quarter of 2022. We’re still working to build version one of the upcoming Hiring Platform. It’s taken a little longer than planned, which is usually the case with new products and features. But we’ve been focusing on reusability and scalability as much as possible, which is a decision that will hopefully help us move faster in the future. For example, we’ve now got a shared Styled Components library across both the learning and hiring platforms. This means that the hiring platform and any other tools (e.g. an admin app) we build in the future will be easier and faster to create.
We had another excellent month of growth in our community as we welcomed 18,676 new members on the platform and over 6,000 new members in our Slack community. A big “hello and welcome” to all our new arrivals! 👋
Now, let’s get into what we’ve done throughout March and what’s planned for April…
Features & Updates
This past month
- Add features to reduce spam comments — I mentioned last month that we had experienced a rise in the number of people posting very short and, in some cases, “spammy” comments on the site. So, we made a few changes to the platform to reduce the likelihood people will post such comments and the likelihood someone might mark them as helpful. I recorded a video explaining all the changes if you’re interested in learning more about what we did.
- Continue building the Hiring Platform — As you probably know, this is our primary focus at the moment. Development is coming along very nicely, and I can’t wait to get this launch. We’ve got a working version of the Talent Search up and running, and we’re currently working on the onboarding flow and settings pages. We’re not too far away from launch now!
- Minor tweaks to the site — As we’ve built the Hiring Platform, we’ve noticed specific areas of the code that could be improved because we’re sharing a component library between the two platforms. One such improvement is the success and error flash messages that appear on the site after specific actions. So, we’ve taken the time to make some additional updates that we hadn’t planned but which will improve both platforms as we advance.
This coming month
- Continue building the Hiring Platform — I’m sure you guessed this one! We’ll keep pushing to round out the first version of the new platform. We’ll focus on finishing off the onboarding flow, the settings pages, and creating the new landing page. Hopefully, by the end of April, we should have a reasonable idea of when the platform will be ready to launch!
- Plan merging the dashboard and home feed — Last year, we created the home feed (where you get all information relevant to you) and the dashboard (where you can manage everything, e.g. your challenges, bookmarks, etc.). These were a significant improvement on how everything worked before. However, we realised we had missed an opportunity after making the update. A much better solution would have been merging the two and having one single location to manage everything. So, I’ve started work planning a new and improved home feed, which will include sidebars (similar to other platform feeds) and make everything much easier to locate.
Wall of Fame
Mentors of the Month
Congratulations to Deniel Den for finishing in the top spot on the Wall of Fame for March! Also, a big congratulations to Shashree Samuel and Old for finishing 2nd and 3rd, respectively. You’ve all got lovely shiny new Mentor of the Month badges on your profiles!
As always, a big thanks to everyone who gave feedback and support to other community members throughout the past month. Giving code reviews is not only a great help to other people and a brilliant way to meet other community members, but it’s also incredible for your own learning.
Reading other people’s code, analysing it, and giving constructive feedback will really help boost your skills and reinforce your knowledge. Giving code reviews is a crucial part of being a professional developer, so reviewing other people’s solutions is a perfect place to practise giving helpful feedback to others!
With the Hiring Platform on the horizon, it’s also worth noting that the code reviews you give to others on the platform will play a big part in where you appear on the developer search results. Your code reviews for other people will be an incredible way to display your knowledge. This will help hiring managers get a detailed insight into you as a developer by reviewing your solutions and reading your code reviews.
Airdrop Raffle winner
Congratulations to CyrusKabir for winning our monthly Airdrop Raffle! Enjoy using your free premium challenge credit to take on one of our premium challenges!
Each week and month, we randomly pick some to win a design credit (weekly) or a premium challenge credit (monthly). Every week or month you finish on the Wall of Fame, you’ll be in with a chance of winning! 🎉
Feedback and ideas welcome
If you’ve got any feedback or ideas for Frontend Mentor, please let me know. I love hearing how you’re using the platform. The best place to message me would be to DM in the Slack community.
I hope you have a great month ahead! 🙂
