Falix Guides

Projects: Build & Ship

Complete builds from zero to deployed — URL shorteners, chat rooms, status pages, dashboards and more.

Build a URL shortener
A complete link-shortening service in three files — Express takes a long URL, stores it in SQLite, and hands back a short code that redirects. Deploy it, test it with curl, and extend it with click counts.
IntermediateTemplate
Build a pastebin with expiry
A share-your-text service in three files — Express stores each paste in SQLite with a chosen lifespan, hands back a link, and sweeps expired pastes automatically. Deploy it, test it with curl, extend it.
IntermediateTemplate
Build a status page for your servers
A live uptime page in three files — it fetches your other servers and sites on a timer, marks each up or down with a hard timeout, and shows the result. Deploy it, point it at your services, extend it.
IntermediateTemplate
Build a GitHub-to-Discord webhook relay
A small service that receives GitHub webhook events, formats them into a tidy message, and forwards them to a Discord webhook from your .env. Two files, verified receive-and-forward path, deploy and extend.
IntermediateTemplate
Build a real-time chat room
A live chat everyone shares, built with Socket.io — one Node server broadcasts every message to every open browser over the single public port. Three files, verified echo round-trip, deploy and extend.
IntermediateTemplate
Build a todo REST API
The classic CRUD API done right — Express and SQLite give you GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE over a todos table, with the correct status codes. Two files, verified with curl, deploy and extend.
IntermediateTemplate
Build and ship a portfolio site
A clean single-page portfolio with no build step and no backend — write HTML and CSS, drop them in public/, and let the static-site setup's nginx serve them fast. Deploy, style, and give it a real domain.
Beginner
Build a blog with Eleventy
Write posts in Markdown, run Eleventy to turn them into a folder of static HTML, and serve that on the static-site setup. Covers the verified build and the honest choice between building locally and building on a server.
Intermediate
Build an image resize API
A complete Node.js service that accepts an uploaded image, resizes it, and returns a compact WebP — built on Express, multer, and sharp, with the full code and every run step.
Intermediate
Build a QR code service
A small Node.js service that turns any text or URL into a QR code — served as a live PNG or as a data-URL for your own pages, with the full code and run steps.
Intermediate
Add "Login with Discord" to your app
The Discord OAuth2 authorization-code flow on Falix — an Express app with a /login redirect and a /callback that exchanges the code for the user's identity, with secrets in .env.
Intermediate
Build an API dashboard with caching
Fetch a public API, cache the result with a TTL map so you don't hammer the upstream, and serve it as your own JSON endpoint — the full Node.js build with run steps.
Intermediate
Build a web leaderboard for your bot
A web page that reads your leveling bot's SQLite database and shows a live ranking — the full Node.js build, with the read-only database pattern that keeps the bot's data safe.
Intermediate
Build a Markdown notes app
A notes app that stores Markdown in SQLite and renders it to safe HTML with marked plus sanitize-html — including the honest truth about why marked alone is not safe.
Intermediate
Build a link-in-bio page
A one-page hub for all your links — pure HTML and CSS served by a real nginx web server, deployed onto the static-site setup with no code and no build step.
BeginnerTemplate
Build an event countdown page
A live countdown to any date — HTML, CSS, and a little browser JavaScript, served as a static site on Falix with no backend and no build step.
Beginner
Build a feedback form
A public feedback form that saves submissions to SQLite and a private admin page — protected by a token — where you read them. No email service required, and we're honest about why.
Intermediate
Build a mock API server
A configurable fake REST API driven by a single JSON file — full GET/POST/PUT/DELETE on any collection you define, with CORS on, so you can build and test a frontend before the real backend exists.
Intermediate
Build a server-side RSS digest
Point it at any RSS feed and it renders a clean digest page plus a JSON endpoint — built with rss-parser on the Node.js application, and honest about the one thing that makes or breaks it: reaching the feed.
Intermediate
Build a Flask guestbook
A complete Flask app — a public guestbook where visitors sign, edit, and delete entries — backed by Python's built-in sqlite3 with no extra database to install. Full create/read/update/delete, verified end to end.
IntermediateTemplate
Build a FastAPI CRUD API
A complete REST API with FastAPI and Python's built-in sqlite3 — create, read, update, delete, with request validation and an interactive /docs page you get for free. Verified end to end with curl.
IntermediateTemplate
Run Django on Falix
Django expects a manage.py and a WSGI server; the Python application runs one app.py. This build bridges the two — migrations on start, then runserver — verified serving in a container, and honest about where the development server stops being enough.
Advanced
Build a PHP guestbook with MySQL
A complete PHP guestbook served by the PHP Web Server application and backed by a managed MySQL database — connected with PDO, prepared statements throughout, verified against a real MySQL server. Your data survives reinstalls.
Intermediate
Build a Go REST API
A complete JSON REST API in pure Go standard library — net/http routing, an in-memory store guarded by a mutex, persisted to a JSON file so data survives restarts. No dependencies, verified building and serving.
Intermediate