Free Web Development Resources

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12 min read

Hosting Services
Learning Platforms
Coding Challenge Platforms
Freelancing Platforms
Remote Jobs
Photos
Illustrations
Icons
Fonts
YouTube Channels
Podcasts
Code Editors
Color Palettes
UI Inspiration
Docs
Animation Libraries
Chart / Data Visualization
Chrome Extensions
Website Optimization Tools

Web development refers to the building, creating, and maintaining of websites. It includes aspects such as web design, web publishing, web programming, and database management. It is the creation of an application that works over the internet i.e. websites.

The word Web Development is made up of two words, that is:

Web: It refers to websites, web pages or anything that works over the internet.
Development: Building the application from scratch.

Making up your career as a web development has never been so easy, thanks to the pandemic as many services and courses have shifted online due to lack of physical accessibility. Today, in this blog I will be sharing a few free web development resources, that every web developer must be aware and have access to boost their journey in the field of web development. So let's get started...

Hosting Services

1. Netlify

Netlify is a San Francisco-based cloud computing company that offers hosting and server less backend services for web applications and static websites. The company provides hosting for websites whose source files are stored in the version control system Git and then generated into static web content files served via a Content Delivery Network.

2. Firebase

Firebase is a platform developed by Google for creating mobile and web applications. It was originally an independent company founded in 2011. In 2014, Google acquired the platform and it is now their flagship offering for app development.

3. Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform, offering over 200 fully featured services from data centers globally. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—are using AWS to lower costs, become more agile, and innovate faster.

4. Heroku

Heroku is a cloud platform as a service supporting several programming languages. One of the first cloud platforms, Heroku has been in development since June 2007, when it supported only the Ruby programming language, but now supports Java, Node.js, Scala, Clojure, Python, PHP, and Go.

5. GitHub Pages

GitHub Pages is a static site hosting service that takes HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files straight from a repository on GitHub, optionally runs the files through a build process, and publishes a website. You can see examples of GitHub Pages sites in the GitHub Pages examples collection.

6. Vercel

Vercel is a platform for frontend frameworks and static sites, built to integrate with your headless content, commerce, or database. We provide a frictionless developer experience to take care of the hard things: deploying instantly, scaling automatically, and serving personalized content around the globe.

7. Surge

Surge is a free static website host which you interact with from your command line. It makes it quick and easy to get new sites and apps online, either manually or as part of your CI build process.

8. Render

Render is a fully-managed cloud platform where you can host static sites, backend APIs, databases, cron jobs, and all your other apps in one place. Static sites are completely free on Render and include the following: Continuous, automatic builds & deploys from GitHub and GitLab.

9. GitLab Pages

With GitLab Pages, you can publish static websites directly from a repository in GitLab. Create websites for your projects, groups, or user account. Host your site on your own GitLab instance or on GitLab(dot)com for free.

Learning Platforms

1. FreeCodeCamp

FreeCodeCamp is a non-profit organization that consists of an interactive learning web platform, an online community forum, chat rooms, online publications and local organizations that intend to make learning web development accessible to anyone.

2. Codecademy

Codecademy is an American online interactive platform that offers free coding classes in 12 different programming languages including Python, Java, Go, JavaScript, Ruby, SQL, C++, C#, Swift, and Sass, as well as markup languages HTML and CSS.

3. JavaScript30

For someone with some programming experience and understanding who wants to focus on improving JavaScript skills, working with the APIs and developing with the browser this is a fantastic course. A couple of lessons are out-of-date however the finished solutions available in the repo are mostly up-to-date.

4. Frontend Mentor

Improve your coding skills by building real projects. Solve real-world HTML, CSS and JavaScript challenges whilst working to professional designs. Join over 12,000 developers building projects, reviewing code, and helping each other get better.

5. Test Automation University

Test Automation University is an open, community-driven educational training program providing FREE courses to help teams succeed.

6. Coursera

Coursera Inc. is a U.S.-based massive open online course provider. Coursera works with universities and other organizations to offer online courses, certifications, and degrees in a variety of subjects.

7. Khan Academy

Khan Academy is an American non-profit educational organization. Its goal is creating a set of online tools that help educate students. The organization produces short lessons in the form of videos. Its website also includes supplementary practice exercises and materials for educators.

8. SoloLearn

Tailored specifically for committed coding learners who are ready to invest in their own coding career, SoloLearn offers access to a comprehensive set of tools that allows you to apply skills learned in academic coursework, practice real coding with “fingers-on” learning, and connect with a large community of fellow learners and experienced programmers to fill gaps in your knowledge.

Coding Challenge Platforms

1. Codewars

Codewars is an educational community for computer programming. On the platform, software developers train on programming challenges known as kata. These discrete programming exercises train a range of skills in a variety of programming languages, and are completed within an online integrated development environment.

2. Topcoder

Topcoder is a crowdsourcing company with an open global community of designers, developers, data scientists, and competitive programmers. Topcoder pays community members for their work on the projects and sells community services to corporate, mid-size, and small-business clients.

3. CodinGame

CodinGame is a technology company editing an online platform for developers, allowing them to play with programming with increasingly difficult puzzles, to learn to code better with an online programming application supporting twenty-five programming languages, and to compete in multiplayer programming contests involving timed artificial intelligence, or code golf challenges.

4. HackerRank

HackerRank is a place where programmers from all over the world come together to solve problems in a wide range of Computer Science domains such as algorithms, machine learning, or artificial intelligence, as well as to practice different programming paradigms like functional programming.

5. Project Euler

Project Euler is a website dedicated to a series of computational problems intended to be solved with computer programs. The project attracts adults and students interested in mathematics and computer programming. Since its creation in 2001 by Colin Hughes, Project Euler has gained notability and popularity worldwide.

6. Coderbyte

Coderbyte is a web application built to help you practice programming and improve your coding skills. We offer a collection of code challenges and web development courses that can help you prepare for upcoming job interviews.

7. CodeChef

CodeChef is an educational program and competitive programming community of programmers from across the globe. CodeChef was started as an educational initiative in the year 2009 by Directi, an Indian software company.

8. Exercism

Exercism is an online, open-source, free coding platform that offers code practice and mentorship on 50 different programming languages.

9. LeetCode

It's a website where people–mostly software engineers–practice their coding skills. There are 800+ questions (and growing), each with multiple solutions. Questions are ranked by level of difficulty: easy, medium, and hard.

10. Sphere Online Judge

SPOJ is an online judge system with over 315,000 registered users and over 20,000 problems. Tasks are prepared by its community of problem setters or are taken from previous programming contests.

Freelancing Platforms

1. Toptal

Toptal is a global remote company that provides a freelancing platform, connecting businesses with software engineers, designers, finance experts, product managers, and project managers.

2. Upwork

Upwork, formerly Elance-oDesk, is an American freelancing platform. In 2015, the Elance-oDesk merger was rebranded as Upwork and the company's full name is now Upwork Global Inc. Upwork is currently based in Santa Clara and San Francisco, California.

3. Freelancer

Freelancer is another freelance website where professionals and companies from around the world collaborate on various projects. Thanks to the wide range of expertise, clients can easily find an expert of any type.

4. PeoplePerHour

PeoplePerHour, legally People Per Hour Limited, is a UK-based company whose function is as an online platform giving businesses access to freelance workers.

5. SimplyHired

Simply Hired is an employment website and mobile application and an online recruitment advertising network based in Sunnyvale, California. The company was launched in 2003. In 2016, Recruit Holdings Co., Ltd., purchased Simply Hired. The company aggregates job listings from thousands of websites and job boards.

6. Envato

Envato is a world-leading online community for creative assets, tools and talent. Millions of people around the world visit Envato to buy and sell creative assets, use smart design templates, learn creative skills or even hire freelancers.

7. Guru

Guru is a freelance marketplace. It allows companies to find freelance workers for commissioned work. Founded in 1998 in Pittsburgh as eMoonlighter.com and still headquartered there.

8. Fiverr

Fiverr is an Israeli online marketplace for freelance services. Fiverr serves to allow listing and applying for small one-off jobs, or gigs, online. Jobs listed on the platform are diverse and range from "get a well-designed business card" to "help with HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and jQuery".

9. 6nomads

6nomads is a remote-focused job platform for tech talent. Create a profile and let companies apply to you.

Remote Jobs

1. FlexJobs

FlexJobs is a service for job seekers who are searching for legitimate, high-quality, remote, and flexible jobs. The positions on our site include jobs with flexible schedules, part-time hours, freelance projects, and remote or at-home positions.

2. Remote.co

Remote.co provides expert insight, best practices, and valuable support for organizations exploring or already embracing remote work.

3. JustRemote

JustRemote is a remote job board where employers can post remote working opportunities and connect with job seekers from around the world. The job posting process is straightforward, and the platform offers a sophisticated search and filter function, as well as job categories and helpful remote working resources.

4. We Work Remotely

The largest remote work community in the world. With over 2.5M monthly visitors, WWR is the #1 destination to find and list incredible remote jobs. Join the remote revolution and find your dream job on We Work Remotely!

5. remote OK

The biggest remote job board on the web with over 25,000 remote work positions for digital nomads, remote workers and people who work from home.

6. Jobspresso

Jobspresso is a remote job board where freelancers and employers from across the world can connect. The site allows employers to browse through a database of resumes and reach more than 100,000 candidates from the U.S., Canada, U.K., Australia, India, and more.

7. Remote Tech Jobs

If you are looking for remote jobs, here is an another great option. This site gets updated monthly to just keep the active jobs on board, and still has over 4,000 positions to choose from various technical fields.

Photos

1. Unsplash

Unsplash is a website dedicated to sharing stock photography under the Unsplash license. Since 2021, it has been owned by Getty Images. The website claims over 265,000 contributing photographers and generates more than 16 billion photo impressions per month on their growing library of over 3.48 million photos.

2. Pixabay

Pixabay is a free stock photography and royalty-free stock media website. It is used for sharing photos, illustrations, vector graphics, film footage, and music, exclusively under the custom Pixabay license, which generally allows the free use of the material with some restrictions.

3. Pexels

Pexels is a provider of stock photography and stock footage. It was founded in Germany in 2014 and maintains a library with over 3.2 million free stock photos and videos.