Frontend Mentor January 2022 review

Hello! We’re already one month down in 2022, and I hope it was a good one for you! We had an interesting month getting started on the work for the hiring platform, which I’m excited to share progress on.

Before I discuss what we’ve been doing, I’m delighted to say January has been a record-breaking month across multiple metrics on Frontend Mentor! Throughout January, we had 19,393 new members register on the site (previous high — 18,458), 44,033 new challenges started (previous high — 39,567), 8,573 solutions submitted (previous high — 7,504), and 7,150 comments posted (previous high — 6,373). It’s incredible to see so many people using the site, taking the challenges, engaging with each other providing code reviews and feedback!

We also saw over 6,000 people join our Slack, taking the number of community members in Slack to over 100,000! ??

The Frontend Mentor community continues to grow at a fantastic rate, making me even more excited about the upcoming hiring platform. This leads in nicely to what we’ve been working on throughout January…

Features &?Updates

This past?month

• Addition of the Wall of Fame Airdrop Raffle — First off, I’ll mention a feature we added that’s not related to the hiring platform. We’ve wanted to find interesting ways to give free members access to assets included in the PRO subscription. I think we’ve found a fun one with the addition of our Wall of Fame Airdrop Raffle. Basically, at the end of each week, we randomly select a free community member who finishes on the Wall of Fame and gift them a design credit that they can use to download the design file for a free challenge. Each month we do the same, but the winner receives a premium challenge credit instead of a design credit. If you win, you’ll receive an in-app notification to congratulate you. Hopefully, it will add a little bit of randomised fun to the platform! To read more about how it all works, you can visit the Wall of Fame and click “Learn more about our Wall of Fame”.
• Created a shared Storybook component library — Now that we’re about to have two separate platforms (the learning platform and the hiring platform), we’ve decided to extract our Storybook components from the learning platform codebase and create a shared library that can be used between both platforms. This will allow us to reuse components between the two platforms while maintaining brand/UI consistency.
• Add new form controls to the component library — The upcoming site changes will include some new form controls that we will use on both the learning platform (to set/edit work preferences) and the hiring platform (to search/filter candidates). So we’ve built them ahead of time in the component library to use the components as building blocks when creating the forms.
• Build the work preferences form — The form to enable developers in our community to set their work preferences is nearly ready. This will allow you to set yourself as available for work and add details like experience, minimum salary expectations, and education. Even though the hiring platform won’t be launched yet, allowing people to set work preferences means anyone available for work will show up on the hiring platform as soon as it’s launched. It will also help us test and tweak the search algorithm before companies join the beta release.

This coming?month

• Add work preferences form — We’re close to having the form ready, so you can expect to see it on the site soon. As mentioned above, this will allow you to set your work preferences ready for when the hiring platform launches!
• Continue building the hiring platform — We’ve completed most of the project configuration for the hiring platform, and the designs are done. So this month, our primary focus will be building the first version of the platform, which will include our Talent Search offering. Talent Search will enable hiring managers to search everyone on Frontend Mentor available for work and filter them by criteria like location, experience, skills, and workplace preference.
• Zero To Mastery partnership for February Wall of Fame — I’m delighted to announce that February’s Mentor of the Month awards will be sponsored by Zero To Mastery ! ZTM is a brilliant learning platform with loads of incredible courses and workshops (and now Career Paths as well) to help boost your knowledge. This means our top 3 Mentors of the Month for February will win a one-month free subscription to the ZTM Academy!

Wall of Fame

Mentors of the?Month

It was an active start to the new year with loads of awesome feedback flying around on the platform! It’s always fantastic to see so many people helping each other out within the community, and this was one of the best months yet ??

Congratulations to Tymur Renhach for finishing in the top spot on the Wall of Fame for January! A big congratulations to Anosha Ahmed and darryncodes for finishing 2nd and 3rd respectively. You’ve all got lovely shiny new Mentor of the Month badges on your profiles!

As mentioned above, Zero To Mastery are sponsoring February’s Mentor of the Month. So the top 3 for February will earn badges and a free one-month subscription to the Zero To Mastery learning platform!

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 Gürkan ?zer for winning our first-ever monthly Airdrop Raffle! Enjoy using your free premium challenge credit!

Gürkan was selected at random from all the free members who finished the month on the Wall of Fame. 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 do 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! ??