30 Websites to follow if you’re into Web Development
I’ve made it a goal to learn at least one useful thing each day so that I can stay sharp and well-versed on the topic of web development and design. To that end, here’s some of the websites I keep track of to find new techniques, resources, and news about building websites.
Most of these sites are updated frequently, so there’s never a lack of new content that fills up my Google Reader.
Because the role of the web developer is ever-expanding, I’ve also included a variety of sites that covers fields relating to web development - such information architecture, user interaction, and web/graphics design.
1. NETTUTS
NETTUTS is a recently launched blog/tutorial site that provides "spoonfed web skills". There are already plenty of useful and detailed tutorials that range from offloading static content to Amazon S3 to creating a beautiful tabbed content area using jQuery. NETTUTS is perfect for developers just starting out, since the tutorials are very thorough and in a "step by step" format. For more advanced developers, it’s an excellent source of inspiration and learning new techniques.
2. woork
Woork is a blog by Antonio Lupetti, a developer from Italy. He provides short, easily-consumable tutorials on various topics of web development such as PHP, Cold Fusion, JavaScript, and CSS. His knack for creating beautiful tutorials, chock full of custom-made images that illustrates the concepts he talks about is a testament to the detail and "work" that Antonio puts in each of his posts. Check out his awesome tutorial on a "Top-Down approach to simplify your CSS code" where he explains his preference on creating and formatting stylesheets.
3. Web Designer Wall
Web Designer Wall is a blog by Nick La that features design ideas and elaborate, stunning tutorials such as creating a CSS gradient Text Effect - a technique that uses an image overlay over normal XHTML text, and jQuery tutorials for designers which showcases ten techniques to get you started with jQuery.
4. Smashing Magazine
I won’t say much about Smashing Magazine since most of us have probably heard of it, but if you haven’t, Smashing Magazine is an excellent resource for web designers and developers looking to be inspired. Smashing Magazine also manages to publish almost everyday, despite their very detailed and thorough posts.
5. Vitamin
Vitamin offers a large amount of information on the topic of web development and design. With many contributors, Vitamin manages to cover a wide range of topics including Ajax, CSS, development techniques, best practices, and workflow management.
6. Wake Up Later
Wake Up Later is the blog of Samuel Ryan, a freelance web developer/designer. Rather than covering specific web development techniques or providing tutorials, he talks about general web development related things such as reasons not to write your own code, tips on improving productivity, and common design mistakes made by developers.
7. Snook.ca
Snook.ca is run by Jonathan Snook, an icon in web development and design. His blog provides tutorials and articles about PHP, JavaScript, and more recently (the blog dates back to 2001), Adobe AIR. He also provides useful resources and bookmarks that are worth a read, and talks about things that are part of being a web developer such as project management via email and maintaining your personal brand online.
8. Signal vs. Noise
Signal vs. Noise is a design/usability company blog by the people over at 37 Signals - known for developing remarkable web applications such as BaseCamp and their involvement in the popular open source web application framework, Ruby On Rails. The blog gives insights about being a productive and effective web application developer and keeping things simple, with entries such as "Workaholics fixate on inconsequential details" and "Sleep deprivation is not a badge of honor".
9. adaptive path blog
adaptive path’s company blog offers news and posts on the topic of user interface design. There’s a variety of useful posts that cover the topic of creating user-friendly designs (not limited to just web applications). Some things the adaptive path crew writes about are "Tips for presenting the look & feel to a client" and "The Lure of the Single Click".
10. Tutorial Blog
Tutorial Blog provides handy tutorials, resources, and lists on various web development and design topics such as code snipplets for web designers, using layer comps in Photoshop to manage designs, and Flash tutorials. Tutorial Blog has a section on user-submitted tutorials which allows readers to share their own tutorials.
11. WebAppers
WebAppers is a blog created by Ray Cheung, a freelance web developer. The premise of WebAppers is to provide news and resources related to open source and free applications that are useful to web developers and designers. From cost-free fonts and icons to navigation menus and image galleries, WebAppers seeks to hunt down useful tools and applications aimed at reducing your time developing custom solutions.
12. Web Resources Depot
Web Resources Depot is similar to WebAppers - it discusses new web resources that web developers and designers may find helpful. Web Resources Depot is an excellent way to stay up to date with what’s currently available out there all in one place.
13. Ajaxian
With continual advancements in Ajax, it’s imperative to keep up to date with modern techniques and news. Ajaxian is the leading Ajax community run by some of the biggest names in the field. You’ll find information, reviews on JavaScript frameworks, helpful tools, and server-side technology specific (like PHP, RoR, and .NET) articles. If Ajax news and information is what you’re looking for, you can be sure to hear about it from Ajaxian.
14.DZone
DZone is a social news site for developers. Users share links related to development and can vote on submissions (very much like Digg but limited to developer links). You can subscribe via RSS to various pages and sections such JavaScript, Flash/Flex, or databases if you want to get instant updates to things specific to your interests.
15. Design Float
Design Float is social media site created for web and graphics designers. Like Dzone, people get to vote up submissions. You’ll find stuff about CSS, HTML, and Photoshop submitted to Design Float.
16. IBM’s developerWorks
With the name camel-cased, you already know off-the-bat that it’s a great site for developers. developerWorks offers many articles and tutorials pertaining to development topics, not just about web development, but also on related fields such as systems administration and open source technologies and applications. developerWorks has a knack for writing about complex topics and boiling it down to consumable, understandable articles. Some of my bookmarks include "Debug and tune applications on the fly with Firebug" (an introduction to Firebug) and the "Make PHP apps fast, faster, fastest" series.
17. del.icio.us
del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site where members can post bookmarks to keep and share. It’s not strictly for web developers but you can monitoring specific tags such as webdev, development, or javascript.
18. Sharebrain
Sharebrain is site that shares useful resources for web workers. You can find resources and tutorials on various web development and design topics such as Photoshop tutorials, Usability, SEO Tools, CMS’s, and interviews.
19. Style Grind
Style Grind shares useful news and information about web technologies and designs. Resources and news reported by Style Grind include a variety of web development and design topics such as updates on Erik Meyer’s CSS Reset and new plugins for jQuery.
20. PSDTUTS
Your value as a web developer increases when you’re proficient in design as well. Some examples would be Wordpress theme developers who not only know how to develop themes, but can also design them. PSDTUTS is a great place to improve on Photoshop skills and is a site I follow to learn more about graphics/web design.
21. Design Reviver
Design Reviver is aimed at providing useful information for web designers. You can visit to read tutorials such getting started with 3D in Flash, to get free downloads like Photoshop brushes, and to find design inspiration.
22. Blog.SpoonGraphics
Blog.SpoonGraphics is a blog about graphics and web design created by Chris Spooner, a graphics and web designer. You can find many tutorials on Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, free, downloadable resources like “Sliding Door” tab menus, articles for inspiration, and news.
23. John Resig
John Resig is the self-titled blog of John Resig - a premier JavaScript developer and author most known for his creation of jQuery, a popular JavaScript framework. John Resig’s blog shares his thoughts about JavaScript development and web applications. It’s where I found out about the release of his new project: Processing.js (a JavaScript port of the Processing programming language) and where he voiced his thoughts on Google Doctype.
24. Boxes and Arrows
Boxes and Arrows is all about best practices, innovations, and trends in the topic of design - including information architecture, graphics design, and user interaction design. You can read about findability (how people look for information), counter-arguments of front-loading information above the fold, and web accessibility.
25. PHPDeveloper
PHPDeveloper brings together news and resources about PHP from blogs and sites that cover PHP. You’ll find reports varying from PHP video tutorials to interesting developments over at Zend.
26. Coding Horror
Coding Horror is a very popular blog (over 100,000 RSS subscribers!) by Jeff Atwood, a software developer. He talks about web development too, posing questions such as Is HTML a Humane Markup Language?, discussing Amazon S3’s viability to host images, and sharing information on versioning databases.
27. O’Reilly Network
The O’Reilly Network by O’Reilly Media (publisher of development books) features articles and blogs pertaining to web development and open technologies. Some recent articles include Creating Applications with Amazon EC2 and S3 and Getting Started with the Google App Engine. Some blogs that are part of the O’Reilly Network include WindowsDevCenter.com (for Windows Developers), ONJava.com (topics cover the Java language) and ONLamp.com (which talks about Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP).
28. Google doctype
Google Doctype is Google’s new project that will include entries "by web developers for web developers". Currently, it doesn’t have very many articles, but it’s certainly a resource to follow in the upcoming months.
29. Web Monkey
Web Monkey - the web developer’s resource is back! Though they’re just getting back to the swing of things, it’s definitely a website to keep track of.
30. Digital Web Magazine
Digital Web Magazine is the online magazine for web professionals (web designers, developers, information architects). You can find many things included here such PHP, Web Standards, and Programming.
Other notable sites to check out
- 24 ways - an annual collection of 24 development and design articles by some of the leading website builders.
- Noupe - Provides news and resources on web design and development.
- Vandelay Design - a blog on web design and development by Steven Snell, who contributed to Six Revisions last month.
- CSS Globe - Community-driven website on web standards.
If you’re looking for your favorite site and it’s not included here, check out something I wrote few months back called "20 Websites That Made Me A Better Web Developer" which talks about popular sites like A List Apart and 456 Berea Steet.
Because of the sheer quantity of great websites out there, I simply can’t talk about and share all of them (I wish I could), so I encourage you to share your own favorites in the comments section with the name, link, and a short description. In about a week, I’ll update this post with your suggestions. Thanks!
201 Comments
AK: The Bloggers Times
May 21st, 2008
I think you can also add my website
http://thebloggerstimes.com Which is more like Google news or Techmeme, Which collects posts from more than 400 blogs related to Blogging, SEO, web-design, PHP, Photoshop other related to webdesign. Certainly you can include it here.
Thank you
AK.
http://thebloggerstimes.com
Craig
May 21st, 2008
It would be awesome if someone could post me an OPML file of all these sites :D
Michael
May 22nd, 2008
Great list !
Knew some already, but others are completely new to me.
Bookmarked it. Thanks.
Noura Yehia
May 22nd, 2008
You need to add yours to the list ;)
Thanks for the mention.
siknus
May 22nd, 2008
For me it’s easy to twitter-follow http://twitter.com/dewebloper instead of all this stuff. He/she knows what’s really interesting.
Matthew 'Web Design' Adams
May 22nd, 2008
Great Sites. http://css-tricks.com/ is another good one with some cool video podcasts.
Henry Jones - Design Reviver
May 22nd, 2008
Thanks. It’s nice to included with such great company.
David
May 22nd, 2008
DevKick
DevKick assists web developers and designers in building modern web sites.
Michael Vogt
May 22nd, 2008
Hi.
Great list.
I wonder is a list apart (http://www.alistapart.com/) wouldn’t be a good addition to it.
Greetings,
Michael Vogt
Jacob Cass
May 22nd, 2008
Better add our 99 Sites All Designers should know about post.
Amy
May 22nd, 2008
thanks for the list, I was just starting to get bored with the same old RSS feeds I have. It’s nice to have something fresh!
Todd
May 22nd, 2008
You filled up my Google Reader. I knew of 4 of the sites, and the rest look like excellent reads. Thanks!
jakedahn
May 22nd, 2008
Someone should make an opml file of all the sites, to make it easy for everyone to subscribe.
Derek
May 22nd, 2008
Great list. I really dug woork, but he hasn’t posted in over a month!
HMERT
May 22nd, 2008
Thanks for the list, maybe these sites added later.
+ ajaxran.com
+ evolt.org
Chris
May 22nd, 2008
Great article and a bunch of great sites. I’ve put all the RSS feeds into an .OPML file so anyone can import it into their news readers. http://www.mediafire.com/?2lmbnvjqseb.
Anita CM
May 22nd, 2008
Great list of resources. Thanks for putting them all together in one place…
m0d
May 22nd, 2008
Thank you, that’s an awesome list. Starting to bookmark them all!
Jason Bartholme
May 22nd, 2008
Great links, Jacob. There are a bunch of sites I had not heard of. I’d also suggest Steven Snell’s Vandelay Website Design, he’s always got good resources for designers and developers.
deeks
May 22nd, 2008
Great list. I also use http://www.builder.com.
collis
May 22nd, 2008
oh wow, thanks for putting nettuts first! :-) Yay!
David Lano
May 22nd, 2008
Great list of sites. One you may want to add would be: http://css-tricks.com/
I’ve found it to be an incredibly useful resource over the past several months. Thanks!
Jacob Gube
May 22nd, 2008
Hey Everyone,
Thanks for the awesome feedback and I’m glad many found new things to add to their feed. Make sure to drop a comment about your favorite sites too - I know I can’t list them all, so I’ll need your help!
@Chris: Thanks you very much for creating the OPML file - it’s something I should have done in the first place and I really appreciate your help.
@Michael Vogt: ALA is definitely an excellent website to track and I think most people have heard of them. I’ve also written about them numerous times and this time I wanted to include sites that are a little less familiar (there’s some exceptions like Smashing Magazine for example, but for the most part I think these sites are fresh).
@Jason Bartholme: Vandelay Design is awesome, and Steven and I have guest posted on each other’s blog. Here’s his post on Six Revisions, and here’s mine on Vandelay Design, if anyone’s interested.
@Jacob Cass: Hey bud, thanks for posting! Thanks for the resource link, excellent collection as well!
@collis: No problem, NETTUTS is great and I wish you all the best - you can probably see by my comments over there that I’m a big fan.
aleeesha
May 22nd, 2008
I like Design Meltdown for inspiration and an overview of popular design trends.
http://www.designmeltdown.com
Shycon Design
May 22nd, 2008
Great list. I’m a big fan of the *TUTS sites. http://pshero.com/ is another similar site… its worth adding to your reader and skimming over (or doing) the tutorials everyday
Chris Coyier
May 22nd, 2008
Nice list! And thanks to all the commentors that mentioned CSS-Tricks!
Dean
May 22nd, 2008
6. Wake Up Later -> The link “reasons not to write your own code” takes me to a page titled “5 Reasons You Should Write Your Own Code.”
Needless to say, I was mildly saddened.
Haduvo Design Fusion
May 22nd, 2008
great list.
haduvodesignfusion.com
Drake
May 22nd, 2008
Not a single one of these actually talks about Design. Photoshop tutorials are not design. Neither are articles about CSS/XHTML or Flash.
I like http://astheria.com and http://andyrutledge.com because they actually talk about design theory.
Television Spy
May 22nd, 2008
Great collection and list.
Jacob Gube
May 22nd, 2008
@Dean: Oops. I meant to link to -> reasons not to write your own code. Thanks for the catch, it’s part of a two-part series of posts.
Toby Somerville
May 22nd, 2008
Another great resource for web development is:
http://www.sitepoint.com
Mark
May 22nd, 2008
Eh, how bout mezzoblue?
WorldWideWebDev
May 22nd, 2008
Great post! I’m curious if these or other sites also provide good internationalization/globalization/localizability development techniques for multi-language web sites.
Ben Leonard
May 22nd, 2008
Great list, you are now bookmarked my friend!
P.S if you get a chance take alook at my resource site Wipeout44.com Hope its worthy of your list ;)
Blog
May 22nd, 2008
Very good list of websites. IBM..
Mark
May 22nd, 2008
Thanks for the list!.
I love http://www.Ganato.com there you will find lot of psd icons and design resources (free layouts, buttons, css, etc)
Umut
May 22nd, 2008
@Jacob,
That’s a great list and thanks for including WebResourcesDepot.
Ben
May 22nd, 2008
As has been mentioned, http://www.alistapart.com
aLien
May 22nd, 2008
Awesome post !! very useful link for web developers and designers to develop a good web site.
I love Nettuts.com too…… lol
Sam
May 22nd, 2008
Nice list, but it doesn’t include http://alistapart.com/, which rules!
Andreas
May 23rd, 2008
Excellent list my freind!!
check out my list on tech blogs
http://www.nueronic.com/top-technology-blogs-every-developermanager-typical-geek-must-read/
liam
May 23rd, 2008
#31 - Six Revisions :) - Nice collection.
Jake-DesignerFied
May 23rd, 2008
http://css-tricks.com/ for sure should be in that list. And I agree http://ajaxrain.com/ as well.
Nice list anyway!
androo
May 23rd, 2008
awesome collection… i currently frequent some of the sites listed however there were some on her that I haven’t… thanks!
Zack
May 23rd, 2008
Another emerging site I keep going back to is http://www.easykiss123.com
Math
May 23rd, 2008
You can also include this dose of inspiration :
http//en.fubiz.net
Ryan D.
May 23rd, 2008
Largest Design Gallery… :-)
http://www.inspirationfolder.com
amir_arian
May 23rd, 2008
Thanks,but where is http://alistapart.com/ ?
yigit
May 23rd, 2008
Nice list anyway!
Gadfly
May 23rd, 2008
Nettuts apparently doesn’t post negative comments to their articles. I posted a comment to one article that they are improperly using code in violation of W3C recommendations and WCAG accessibility requirements. If the Nettuts site owner cannot “man up” to honest criticism, they are not worth it at all.
Jacob Gube
May 23rd, 2008
@Gadfly: Your comment may still be in moderation. I’ve posted constructive criticisms, suggestions for improvements, and flaws about jQuery code and XHTML mark-up on a couple of tutorials, and Collis has published them.
Nasirjumani
May 23rd, 2008
Great list, stumbled!
Peter
May 24th, 2008
I am humbled to have StyleGrind included among these other truly great sites. Thanks so much.
Bart
May 24th, 2008
Great list but http://cssmania.com/ is missung
Viswam
May 25th, 2008
What a collection of web sites! Great work
by
Viswam
Jennifer Jones
May 25th, 2008
Great List. Thanks
Jad
May 26th, 2008
Thanks for this collection :) it always help to make new creative ideas and designs
Aleks
May 26th, 2008
Great collection of nice websites!
But http://www.designpicks.de/ is missing :D
Daniel
May 26th, 2008
What about w3schools.com ?
Sabinder
May 27th, 2008
These are great sites - thanks for sharing.
Robert
May 27th, 2008
Hmmm, These are neat, and it is a pretty good list, but how is anyone meant to follow 30 websites? The blogging format seems fundamentally broken for this type of content. To improve my design skills, I bought a book - nicely structured and well thought out by an experienced teacher. For java solutions, there’s the developers almanac. If someone took the time to categorize, structure, rate and index this content, then it would be really useful!
Chris Harrison
May 27th, 2008
How did A List Apart (http://alistapart.com) not make this list?
Andrew
May 27th, 2008
Thanks for including Design Float!
Nodster
May 28th, 2008
Def missing out when you don’t have CSS tricks (http://www.css-tricks.com)
Computerden
May 28th, 2008
interesting sites. Can definitely help speed up the development process
Tom
May 28th, 2008
I was brought up on WebMonkey, great to see it back again! Couldn’t believe it was shut down - I learnt so much from that site.
KNOWTEBOOK.COM
May 28th, 2008
http://www.knowtebook.com - webdevelopers daily dosis
Jeff Finley
May 28th, 2008
These links are really helpful. Nettuts is such a nice site. Wake Up Later also looks promising.
Welcome to Paradise
May 30th, 2008
I’m following more than 14 of the above mentioned website. Now I’ll also be following sixrevisions.com too.
But I have to tell you that you’ve missed out some great sites like, stumbleupon, digg, cssremix. They should’ve been in this list too.
Antonio Lupetti
May 30th, 2008
Hi friends! Thanks to added my site in this grat post. I really appreciated.
Antonio
matthewmurdoch
May 30th, 2008
Jacob, this is just what I was looking for tonight! Thanks for your work! Found you on Digg. I’ll link over from my site.
Danny Thomson
May 31st, 2008
you forgot one that is really great.. http://www.DynamicDrive.com
Help Developer
May 31st, 2008
Fantastic list, I always like to find new graphic design blogs and I found a couple of new ones with this list so thank you.
I would also like to add my blog as well: http://help-developer.com, I put a lot of work into trying to get my blog as favoured as the ones shown in this list.
Danny
June 1st, 2008
Good resources, thanks.
I do most work on PHP but now ROR is looking good too…
John Campbell
June 1st, 2008
Great list, there are so many helpful sites for designers and web developers.
I really like http://www.designbump.com - it is like digg for designers.
David Appleyard
June 1st, 2008
I’d like to recommend http://www.designshack.co.uk
Drupal Museum
June 2nd, 2008
Excellent list.
Web design Company UK
June 3rd, 2008
If you are into flash then I would like to recommend flashkit.com. It offers useful resources and tutorials in flash including a rage of source .fla files to download and use on your website. A vats collection of resources that are updated regularly.
Nelly Yusupova
June 3rd, 2008
Great List. I would also add lifehacker.com to the list.
Patsy
June 4th, 2008
OMG - I’m now officially a RSS junkie!
istioselida
June 5th, 2008
great list! i have now plenty of reading to do!!
Laura
June 9th, 2008
Great list, haven’t seen much of these ones before! :)
Laura
Jeff Parks
June 11th, 2008
HI Jacob,
I’m the Podcast Editor for Boxes and Arrows. I thought your readers might be interested to know they can find the shows by following this link http://www.boxesandarrows.com/story/index/date/1444
We recently recorded nearly all of the presentations from the IA Summit in Miami this past April.
People can also subscribe in iTunes to get all the shows, if intereste.
A great list, I’ve used many of these sites for projects many times for clients.
Cheers!
Jacob Gube
June 11th, 2008
@Jeff Parks: Thanks for the heads-up!
Mark
June 12th, 2008
you have forgotten http://www.stylizedweb.com it’s really a good one too
user
June 12th, 2008
allsyntax.com rocks PHP
Kevin Saitta
June 13th, 2008
I just stumbled on this blog and this is an excellent list!
You might want to add:
http://www.w3schools.com/
http://www.dynamicdrive.com/
http://javascriptkit.com/
http://www.3point7designs.com/blog/
uzaktan eğitim
June 17th, 2008
Thanks. great list!
D. Diesil
June 17th, 2008
Ahh man!!!
This is exactly what I have been looking for.
Thanks a billion,
D. Diesil
Veera
June 28th, 2008
Great collection of sites. Subscribed to most of the sites listed here!
PoLR
July 1st, 2008
Excellent list - I’m a huge fan of smashing magazine already and there are a few new ones to visit on here.
Lynne - PoLR
Andy
July 6th, 2008
I want to say that you shouls remove pshero.com from that list. That blog steals tutorials from other countries websites translate it in english. He is a thief
Jacob Gube
July 7th, 2008
@Andy: Thanks for the heads-up. I’ll investigate this further and take the necessary actions to remedy this issue.
KNOWTEBOOK.COM
July 8th, 2008
Wow, interesting list: whats about http://www.knowtebook.com ??
miss erica
July 10th, 2008
Another great resource list - Web Developer’s Handbook avail at http://alvit.de/handbook/
Geoserv
July 15th, 2008
STUMBLED!
Great list, I frequent Smashing Magazine and A List Apart.
yamaniac
July 17th, 2008
I am a great fan of smashing Magazine, PSDtuts, you guys missed out Css-tricks. The content quality there is pretty cool!
jesse
July 18th, 2008
Wow, an awesome list. I used about 5 of these sites to get around the Web Dev world before I got to my job….this industry is growing fast and I’m glad to have been given a head start. Check out my company though, we do every type of website (Design and Develop) http://www.emagid.com
Jim
July 19th, 2008
Nice list, but I think you forgot two excellent resources that are absolute must-reads: Eric Meyer’s blog and the CSS Zen Garden. Both sites feature up-to-date information on layout and design and many tips and techniques for making your web design process both smooth and elegant.
Avenues_Nepal
July 21st, 2008
hey thanx a lot.. great help!! :-)
Deb harrison
August 7th, 2008
I clicked the button on my toolbar accidentally, but what a great piece! I shall read it a bit better when I have more time.
Thanks
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