
I published my first website around 2001. Probably before that. Almost 20 years ago. Unfortunately, the exact date I started doing web development is probably lost by now.

Everything began when my dear friend, [Christophe Raimbault](https://www.la-croix.com/Religion/Catholicisme/France/Pere-Christophe-Raimbault-Il-faut-vivre-lEvangile-pouvoir-transmettre-2018-05-20-1200940389), a priest in the [Diocese of Tours](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_Archdiocese_of_Tours), asked if I was interested in managing and building a website for the "Notre-Dame La Riche" parish. If you are not too familiar with what a parish is, it's mostly a local community of different churches. At the time, this sounded like an amazing challenge but I had no idea what I was getting into. I had never touch a line of code before, I was only 15 years old. I never stopped coding since then.

The following list of websites are the ones that had the most impact on my life. I build a lot more websites but smaller and less important. I'm not including them here.

## "Notre-Dame La Riche" parish website (2000-2005)

"Notre-Dame La Riche" parish website was my first website. At the time, no blogs, no Google, no Github... most of my time was dedicated in studying code source of other websites, reading books about HTML, CSS, PHP. It was definitelly a fun time. I was learning a lot, things seemed to be a lot more simple than nowadays.

![](/images/articles/decade-web-development-personal-journey/david-dias-present-ndlr.jpg 'Me presenting the website in 2005')

I still have some code source and I can't bear looking at it just for few seconds 🤣: CSS mixed with HTML, no version control, layouts build with tables... as I said, it was fun but I'm glad things have changed. The website had multiple refactoring along the years. I remember having some animated banners build with Flash.

![](/images/articles/decade-web-development-personal-journey/paroisse-ndrl-2004.jpg 'Notre-Dame La Riche parish website in 2004')

![](/images/articles/decade-web-development-personal-journey/paroisse-ndlr-2005.jpg 'Notre-Dame La Riche parish website in 2005')

- Internet Archive URL: https://web.archive.org/web/20050204174756/http://paroissendlr-tours.cef.fr/
- Stack: HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL
- Current URL: https://paroisse-ndlr-scel.jimdo.com/

## WikiKto (2005-2006)

Wikipedia was launched in 2001. At this time, wikis were popular and Wikipedia was just beginning. I remember how much criticism this community project received. For many reasons that I have somewhat forgotten, I decided to create a dedicated wiki related to Catholic knowledge. I named it WikiKto (Kto is the French abbreviation for Catholic).

To my great surprise, the project gained a lot of contributors. I was no longer alone. I was not the only one who thought that a wiki about Catholic knowledge was a good idea. I was not the only one who believed that Catholic knowledge should be shared and made accessible to everyone.

The project was officially launched on May 13, 2005. I had to shut it down a little over a year later when I moved to Brazil and could no longer manage it.

![](/images/articles/decade-web-development-personal-journey/wikikto-fr.jpg 'WikiKto homepage in French')
![](/images/articles/decade-web-development-personal-journey/wikikto-en.jpg 'WikiKto homepage in English')

- Internet Archive URL (French): https://web.archive.org/web/20060207015812/http://fr.wikikto.org/index.php/Accueil
- Internet Archive URL (English): https://web.archive.org/web/20051227152637/http://en.wikikto.org/index.php/Main_page
- Internet Archive URL (Portuguese - Launched October 12, 2006): https://web.archive.org/web/20070917013037/http://br.wikikto.eu/index.php/P%C3%A1gina_principal
- Stack: MediaWiki, PHP, MySQL
- Old URL: `https://wikikto.org/`

## WikiKtosource (2005-2006)

WikiKtosource was launched few weeks after WikiKto and was the equivalent to [Wikimedia](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page). It was a wiki dedicated to offer open source resources for the catholic community. It was a place to share and download resources like images mainly.

![](/images/articles/decade-web-development-personal-journey/wikiktosource-fr.jpg)

- Internet Archive URL (French): https://web.archive.org/web/20060207032908/http://fr.wikiktosource.org/index.php/Accueil
- Old URL: `https://wikiktosource.org/`

## David Dias Blog (2010 to today)

I created a first version of my personal blog in 2010. Few months before I started my first job as a web developer. For many years, creating new content and maintaining a blog has been a challenge for me with so many things and ideas to create. The current version of my blog (2022-2023) is probably the one that finally got the most attention to me.

![](/images/articles/decade-web-development-personal-journey/david-dias-blog-2012.jpg 'David Dias Blog in 2012')
![](/images/articles/decade-web-development-personal-journey/david-dias-blog-2015.jpg 'David Dias Blog in 2015')
![](/images/articles/decade-web-development-personal-journey/david-dias-blog-2020.jpg 'David Dias Blog in 2020')

- Stack: from Wordpress, to Gatsby (2020) and Next.js (2022)

## França Brasileira (2009-2011)

![](/images/articles/decade-web-development-personal-journey/franca-brasileira-logo.jpg)

Back from Brazil, I decided to create a forum to help Brazilians to move to France and to connect to other Brazilians living in France. Thanks to all my contacts made in Brazil, I was able to get a lot of exposure and the forum and blog got very popular.

- Internet Archive URL: https://web.archive.org/web/20111210020959/http://www.francabrasileira.com/
- Stack: Workpress, PHP, MySQL
- Old URL: https://www.francabrasileira.com/

## Frontenddeveloper (2013-2014)

`frontenddeveloper.fr` was another trial to create a blog about front-end development. I was not very active on it and I decided to close it after few months.

![](/images/articles/decade-web-development-personal-journey/frontenddev-fr.jpg)

- Internet Archive URL: https://web.archive.org/web/20130205064050/http://frontenddeveloper.fr/
- Stack: Workpress, PHP, MySQL
- Old URL: `https://frontenddeveloper.fr/`

## Front-End Checklist (2017 to today)

The Front-End Checklist is an open-source project I created just few month before leaving Mauritius. Initially build for my frontend team, it became a worlwide and very popular project around the globe. You can read about [how it earned 6,000 stars in just 5 days](/articles/front-end-checklist-viral-growth-story) and [how to make the most of it](/articles/front-end-checklist-implementation-guide). I have been meaning to build a V2, more modern and with a better user experience. Not sure if and when I will have time to do it.

![](/images/articles/decade-web-development-personal-journey/frontendchecklist.jpg)

- Stack: HTML, CSS, JavaScript
- Current URL: https://frontendchecklist.io/

## World Web Stories (2021 to today)

I officially start the podcast [World Web Stories when I was living in Mauritus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYtcNF7cuGU&list=PLVrgPXb9LZwjRK2cL1uQ0IllT9Ljokxrz), in 2016. I was not very active, only had 5 episodes and it was in French. In 2021, unemployed for few weeks, I decided to relaunch the podcast in English with a new format and with the goal to interview one person from each country in the world.

Unfortunately, I choose to spend more time on my other podcast "Erreur 200". I still want to continue this project, but I'm not sure when I will.

![](/images/articles/decade-web-development-personal-journey/worldwebstories-podcast.jpg)

- Stack: Gatsby, React
- Current URL: https://worldwebstories.com/

## Erreur 200 (2021 to today)

Erreur 200 is a French podcast I co-host with Jean-Rémy Duboc about web development. We talk about our experience, our mistakes, our successes, our tips and tricks. We also interview people from the web development community.

![](/images/articles/decade-web-development-personal-journey/erreur-200.jpg)

- Stack: Gatsby, React
- Current URL: https://erreur200.com/

## Conclusion

Looking back more than 10 years, I'm very proud and grateful for all the opportunities and projects I had the chance to work on. I'm also very grateful for all the people I met along the way. Those projects shaped in a way my career and life and I'm not even mentionning all the professional projects I've worked on. If you're interested in how I work today, you can check out [my ideal desk setup](/articles/multi-purpose-developer-music-electronics-setup) where I do most of my development work.


Dive into my decade-long journey in web development, chronicling key projects that have shaped my career and personal growth. From my first parish website to open-source initiatives and podcasts, explore the evolution of my skills and the diverse range of projects that have defined my path in the digital world.

Looking Back on My Web Development Journey: A Decade of Projects


In October 2017, I launched my [first open-source project on Github](https://medium.freecodecamp.org/how-my-first-project-won-6000-stars-on-github-in-5-days-6340ec99829e): the Front-End Checklist. In few hours, the project gained international visibility. After that, for a number of weeks, I had an incredible journey with many people around the world. I recently started giving talks in local communities around [Spain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain) and [Portugal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portugal) about the project, and I plan to check out [France](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France) later on.

Doing these presentations gave me a different perspective and vision about the worldwide communities who organize meetups regularly. I discovered that there were an huge number of people who were looking for more and more content and wanted to participate in local communities.

After initiating the [Front-End Dev Mauritius community](https://www.facebook.com/groups/frontenddevmauritius), I know how complicated it can be to find people willing to share their experiences about Front-End Development. And for some, such as those who recently have moved from another city or country, having a welcoming tech community is important to getting setting up.
I wanted to share with you some of the things I learned before, during, and after these meetups I participated in throughout Europe. And I want to encourage you to **participate more in local events no matter where you are today**.

## Don’t give up!

![Map showing Spain and Portugal and a line linking Barcelona to Madrid and Porto](/images/articles/learned-presenting-side-project-europe/map-front-end-checklist-conference.png 'Barcelona, Madrid and Porto')

Knowing that I would be on "holidays" for a few weeks in France, Spain, and Portugal I decided to try contacting local groups in **Barcelona, Madrid, Lisbon, Aveiro, and Porto**. I sent messages directly to the founders of local groups using [Meetup.com](https://www.meetup.com/), or contacted them via Twitter when they had specified their account on their profile. But, as I was expecting, I didn’t receive a lot of replies at first.

In **Barcelona** however, Bettina from [Ignit](https://itnig.net/), who managed the “_[Barcelona Front-End Development Meetup](https://www.meetup.com/fr-FR/Barcelona-Front-End-Development-Meetup/)_”, answered me really quickly. We decided, after some email exchanges and a phone call, to have a meetup on 14 March about my project.

In **Madrid**, the “Front-end Developers Madrid” organizers never answered me. But Juan Macias, a teacher’s assistant at “Ironhack Madrid,” did everything to help me setup a talk, which I gave on 16 March.

In **Lisbon**, Shannon Graybill from “Lisbon Le Wagon” showed a lot of interest in having me do a presentation. But we lost touch after we tried to call each other few times without setting a time. Besides, I decided not to present in Lisboa, but instead tried to do something in Porto (easier for me, as I was in Aveiro for two weeks).
Then in Porto I contacted Ricardo Mendes, who usually organizes “Porto Codes”. After few messages and emails, we decide to organize a talk on 5 April at Porto.io, at a coworking space in the middle of the city.

![Event page on the Porto Codes Meetup page](/images/articles/learned-presenting-side-project-europe/meetup-front-end-checklist-madrid.jpeg)

## Know your audience

One of the first rules I learned about giving a talk or a presentation was to “know your audience.” That is maybe the most challenging but nonetheless important rule you need to have in mind.
A few days before each talk, I went through all the profiles on Meetup, trying to know my future audience better. Unfortunately, most of the people don’t put their Twitter or Facebook account in their profiles. They don’t often answer some basic questions sent by the owner of the group when they subscribe, which makes it really hard for a speaker learn about the target audience of a meetup.
I sent a tweet to some people before the meetup in Barcelona, but I didn’t receive any responses. Next time 😉.

<Tweet url="https://twitter.com/TheDavidDias/status/972860228457975808" />

Since I didn’t know my audience in advance, I then decided to ask about each person’s career just before I started my talk. I adapted my content and discourse depending on their responses and it seemed that my slides were understandable by any level.

## Check for other local events

I’m not a fan of football (although my father is) — I never felt passionate about it. But that was something that would’ve been useful to think about before setting the Barcelona meetup’s date. Twenty-three peopole planned to come, but just…2 of them came. I discovered afterwards that “Barcelona — Chelsea” was probably one of the reasons why people didn’t come.
For me, it was an awesome time. I was able to focus more on specific questions asked by Jimmy from Los Angeles and Costa Rica and Marcela from Mexico (I also won’t forget the delicious pizza we ate after the meetup at Anauco).

## Print your username on a tee-shirt

![David Dias standing up and presenting near a video projector and MacBook. He is wearing a white tee-shirt with his username @thedaviddias printed in black.](/images/articles/learned-presenting-side-project-europe/iron-hack-david-dias-spain.jpeg 'Ironhack in Madrid (Spain)')

That might sound crazy, but printing my username on a tee-shirt was one of the things I’m happy I did. Some people may ask you how to contact you or may be too shy to do so. But with your username “on you,” it’s impossible not to find you on Internet (or forget who you are 😅)!

<Tweet url="https://twitter.com/itnig/status/973996442636472320" />

<Tweet url="https://twitter.com/SoyJuanMacias/status/974736513266339840" />

<Tweet url="https://twitter.com/locks/status/981961050827390982" />

## Tell stories and share what motivates you

Telling stories is not that hard.
Lots of talks I’ve heard in the past, from different people, seemed “empty,” without any soul. Doing a talk is much more for me than a simple exposition of facts or numbers or code. It’s about a story, how someone found a way to develop their application, how some new technologies can improve the way we work in our daily lives, and so on.
In my case, it was how a “simple” checklist changed the way I see the Front-End worldwide community, and the way that some people will work in the future.

## Don’t need to be the best

![David Dias standing front of a slide showing a list of JS task runners (Grunt, Gulp, Webpack...)](/images/articles/learned-presenting-side-project-europe/talking-about-task-runners.jpeg 'Talking about task runners at Ironhack Madrid')

That is maybe one of the biggest lesson I wanted to share with you in this post: you don’t need to be the best or the expert to share what you know or what you’ve learned before.
Lot of beginners with less than a couple years of experience don’t feel confident sharing what they know with others, because they think they don’t know enough.
From my point of view, that’s the wrong belief. Whether you have experience or not, you always have something useful that can be shared with others. It’s as simple as that. And it’s something some people need to start believing once and for all.

## Take photos before everyone leaves!

If your audience is used to sharing photos on Twitter or other social media, you’re lucky — you’ll have some photos of you to help you remember your talk or show the presentation you did. They might even come in handy if you want to write an article about it 😅.
But taking a group photo with all your attendees is a fun thing to plan before everyone runs out of the meetup. I failed on that point many times, and I was only able to take a picture in Porto with the two organisers, including Tim Lai.

<Tweet url="https://twitter.com/TheDavidDias/status/982013829969301505" />

A photo took after most of the attendees already went home.

## Ask for feedbacks

This is another thing I missed, but I now know how useful it could’ve been. Having feedback on any work or talk can be really helpful when we try to improve ourselves and the way we present things.
In my next meetups, I’ll probably give attendees a [bit.ly](https://bitly.com/) link redirecting to a [Typeform quizz](https://www.typeform.com/) which I’ll ask them to fill out.

And in case you didn’t read my article about how everything began, take a look at it here.
Putting it all together
Giving these talks in different cities and countries helped me learn how much can be shared and taught to an incredible number of people. During these last few years, while learning and sharing my vision of Front-End development, I wasn’t able to see how large the community of people wanting to become better actually was.
We can start with something really small, and that small thing can give us the opportunity to meet people and give them something they needed or were searching for.

Now, let’s recap each point I went through:

- Even if local communities don’t always send you a response, **don’t give up**!
- Always **check for other local events** when you decide on a date for a meetup
- Try to **know your audience** before, or prepare your talk to be accessible for anyone
- Printing **your username on a tee-shirt** can be helpful
- Remember to **tell stories** and to **show your motivation**
- You **don’t need to be the best** to share something with someone else
- Don’t forget to **take photos** before everyone leaves
- **Ask for feedback** to improve your next talk

## Thank you for reading!

That’s it. In case you like my article and find it useful, here are some things you can do to show your support:

- Give a star ⭐️ on GitHub: https://github.com/thedaviddias/Front-End-Checklist (It’s important for me to continue launching other open-source projects)
- Follow me on GitHub: https://github.com/thedaviddias
- Follow me on Twitter: https://x.com/thedaviddias

If you want to learn more about the Front-End Checklist and how to use it effectively, check out my article about [how to make the most of it](/articles/front-end-checklist-implementation-guide).

If you're interested in my development setup, you can read about [my ideal desk setup](/articles/multi-purpose-developer-music-electronics-setup) where I do most of my work.


Presenting a side project at international meetups can be a valuable learning experience. This article offers an insightful overview of what I learned while introducing the Front-End Checklist to developer communities during my European vacation. From organizing talks in different cities to adapting to diverse audiences, discover the key takeaways that can help you share your own projects and contribute to the global tech community.

Lessons From Presenting My Side Project Across Europe


![](/images/articles/how-my-open-source-project-earned-6000-stars-on-github-in-just-5-days/github-stars.jpeg 'A screenshot of the Front-End Checklist repository (numbers are already outdated since I finished writing that article)')

Last month I launched two open source projects on GitHub. A few days later, my [Front-End Checklist](https://github.com/thedaviddias/Front-End-Checklist) was showing more than **6,000 stars** (17,000 as of writing). And I got 600 stars for my Resources-Front-End-Beginner project!

It was unexpected for me to receive such support coming from so many people around the globe: USA, Brazil, China, Japan, France, Canada, Spain, Mauritius, Japan, Portugal... Even now, I still can’t believe how many pull requests I received with changes and corrections these last days.

For so long I received gifts from the open source world. Now I felt it was finally time for me to give back everything I have learned, and to help others.

As a professional Front-End manager, I spend my time teaching and encouraging others to learn and practice. I regularly share interesting content and useful tools on the [Front-End Dev Mauritius group](https://www.facebook.com/groups/frontenddevmauritius/) on Facebook. But I never planned that the Front-End Checklist will become a worldwide project.

## My motivations to write another Front-End checklist

I’ve seen some Front-End checklists over the past year on the web:

- [Web Developer Checklist](https://webdevchecklist.com/)
- [A Checklist for Website Reviews](https://drublic.de/articles/frontend-checklist/)
- [Opquast checklist (in French)](https://checklists.opquast.com/en/)

Some of them helped me years ago when I wanted to improve my Front-End knowledge, but most of them were just “not enough.”

Two years ago, I decided to start writing my own checklist based on my experiences. That checklist became way more important when I started to manage Front-End teams in France and Mauritius. Based on questions and usual mistakes from the teams, the content kept improving.

When I needed to teach someone how to become a better Front-End developer, I always had in mind that checklist that I started to work on. The document which started with a simple personal need became an ambitious tool for my team.

Then I started to feel the need to share it with more people.

A month ago I decided to put a first version on GitHub. And… at that moment, everything started to happen fast… really fast.

## Things can happen fast on the internet. Really fast.

On 18 October, I published the first version of my Front-End Checklist. I went to see all members of my team and I asked them to put a star 😀 on the repository. They don’t really have the habit to star projects on Github, I had to encourage them to do so 😂.

A few hours later, watching an episode of [Hawaii Five-O](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaii_Five-O) with my [wife](https://medium.com/@kajaaldias), I opened my GitHub repository on my iPad. I was shocked to find that in only few hours, I had already received 700 stars.

![](/images/articles/how-my-open-source-project-earned-6000-stars-on-github-in-just-5-days/dean-surprised.gif '700 stars on Github in only few hours')

I was not able to understand why and where these stars were coming from. (At that time, I didn’t know about the Insights > Traffic section on GitHub.)

I hadn’t even published any tweet about the Github repository. The next day, I published on my Twitter account: just few likes and retweets about the checklist. Nothing that may explain, where everyone was coming from.

<Tweet url="https://twitter.com/TheDavidDias/status/920894390641614848" />

I then started to validate pull requests and answer some logged issues. I was feeling so grateful for that unimaginable support. Even working daily with international websites, I forgot sometimes the power of Internet. (Or it’s maybe I’m living in a small island far from everything 😂.)

Next day, I received on Twitter a message from Product Hunt:

<Tweet url="https://twitter.com/ProductHuntHi/status/920896487600640001" />

Without really taking time to think, I opened my Illustrator and designed a logo to put on the page. I kept it basic, inspired by the logo of Front-End Coders, a future NGO I’ll be launching soon officially.

![](/images/articles/how-my-open-source-project-earned-6000-stars-on-github-in-just-5-days/frontend-open-source-projects.jpeg 'Front-End checklist and Front-End beginners essential logos')

Since then, I received in less than one week 40 pull requests, was published on Codrops for my 2 lists in their Collective #359, on the Panda Weekly Newsletter #130 and #131, Hacker news, Reddit (multiple times), NewsCenter.io, La Ferme du Web and more.

Translation in Japanese, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Portuguese and Vietnamese were done in less than 2 weeks!

![](/images/articles/how-my-open-source-project-earned-6000-stars-on-github-in-just-5-days/insights-front-end-checklist.jpeg 'Insights for the Front-End Checklist on 23 October 2017')

The list is positioned first on Google for the words “Front-End Checklist”. Some landing pages on Github have the checklist on first position (Front-End Development, Checklist, Guidelines).

I discovered more recently that the project was on top of the trending feed on GitHub with more than 6,000 stars in less than a week (on 27 October 2017).

The Front-End Checklist is trending on Github!

## Checklists can be more than simple checklists

I’m a big fan of “Awesome”, the curated list of awesome lists created first by
Sindre Sorhus
. But some lists are colossal and I found myself sometimes struggling to find what I want. I’m not sure if it’s because the amount of links or the absence of information attached to each link.

This is why I decided to add emoticons in my two lists. I usually don’t use them too often, but in that case I found interesting to add more of these to have more information about the content of my links.

The Front-End Checklist use emoticons to add more informations for each rule
As mentionned in the introduction of the Front-End Checklist, I used:

- 📖 for documentation or article links
- 🛠 for online and / or testing tools links
- 📹 for any type media, but specially video content

I also used 3 images (High, medium, low) to integrate different levels of priorities. I didn’t find any emoticon that could replace these images easily.

The list of resources for Front-End Beginners also use emoticons to add some additional informations.
On my list of resources for Front-End Beginners, for example, I decided to indicate free and paid tutorials. It’s easier to have these type of informations before you click on any link. People can directly focus on what they prefer.

I use daily applications like Cloud Outliner Pro and MindNode to create new lists for my personal and professional life (and Todoist). I can’t imagine doing a complex task without a set of items into a list.

If you have something to share, share it on GitHub now!
When it comes to sharing documentation or code, today, there’s no other place I like more than Github. Last week I decided I needed to put my work in a place where people can easily access and participate.

This kind of project is meant to be used and perfected by experiences and different points of view. Because Front-End development is always moving, evolving, it’s not always simple to stay on track on everything. Collaborative projects, where people can participate are for me the best way to have constantly updated tools.

I regularly meet young developers and people who want to become Front-End developer. Even on my YouTube channel, I receive lot of questions and requests. The first advice I give to them is to start coding and put their work on Github. It’s a way for them to show their interests to their friends, a future recruiter and to the world.

The Front-End Code Camp is an event workshop to better understand the process of web development.
Don’t hesitate, everything you do, related to coding and web, take time to present it correctly on an README file and click “push”!

## What’s next?

By the time I wrote this article I was already working on a small open-source web app... Today, you can already access the Front-End Checklist App online!

Due to many requests, I’m already working on an NPM module which will probably be used by a future website. It was not in my initial plans but when I saw so many people asking for, I couldn’t refuse.

I have much more to share! I’m working on other lists that may be as good as the Front-End Checklist… Well, I hope! 😃

If you want to learn more about the Front-End Checklist and how to use it effectively, check out my article about [how to make the most of it](/articles/front-end-checklist-implementation-guide).

If you're interested in my development setup, you can read about [my ideal desk setup](/articles/multi-purpose-developer-music-electronics-setup) where I do most of my work.


The Front-End Checklist unexpectedly became my breakout open-source project, gaining unprecedented attraction and visibility in the developer community. In this article, I take you through the exhilarating first five days after publishing the project on GitHub. From a modest start to trending globally, discover the rollercoaster journey of how a simple checklist resonated with thousands of developers worldwide and earned 6,000 stars in less than a week.

Side project articles

Looking Back on My Web Development Journey: A Decade of Projects

Lessons From Presenting My Side Project Across Europe

My Open Source Project Got 6,000 GitHub Stars in 5 Days