#Community

Welcome to the 4th post in the Fun Weekend Projects series - where I share cool project ideas that you can build over a weekend. These projects are a great way for you to improve your coding skills while having fun in the process.

Lately I’ve noticed a rise in startups that are basically just a web directory. They may be simple but few of them seems to be earning a decent income.

If you are new to web development, building a web directory might sound complex. But in reality, it’s gonna be super easy, barely an inconvenience! (Pitch Meetings fans, anyone?)

All you need is to choose a niche topic and build the following three pages to get started:

1. A form for users to submit a product. It can be websites, apps, restaurants etc.

2. A page to view the details of a single product.

3. A page to browse all the products in your directory.

Here are a few examples that could inspire you:

https://10words.io
https://www.aiawesome.com
https://www.basedtools.ai
https://1000.tools
https://maze.do/saas-directory
https://www.generativetools.io

You can use Google Sheets as your backend database to create a scalable directory that’s easy to update and accessible from anywhere. You don’t need to be a database expert or set up a database server.

Why Use Google Sheets as Your Database?

1. Super easy to manage: Anyone with basic spreadsheet skills can manage and update data effortlessly. You can focus on building your project without the hassle of maintaining complex database systems.

2. Automatic Version Control: Every change you make in Google Sheets is automatically saved, and you can easily revert to previous versions. If something goes wrong, just restore an earlier version!

3. No Need for Backups. Google Sheets takes care of all your data storage and backups automatically, so you don’t have to worry about losing your hard work.

4. Scalability: While Google Sheets isn’t suited for massive datasets, it’s more than enough for a small-to-medium web directory.

So why wait?

It's time to decide what content you want to feature in your directory, whether it’s a list of apps, websites, services or anything else. I suggest picking a niche that interests you and start building right away!

My Web Directory

I don’t want to recommend you project ideas without implementing them myself. For this project, I created a simple Youtube channel recommender where I used Google sheets as the database.

Feel free to check it out: Youtube Hunt