How I Built a Tiny Ranking Website with GPT (and Learned More Than I Expected)
I launched a small side project: https://rankiwiki.com.
It’s a simple ranking-style website where people can search any topic, and if that topic doesn’t exist yet, a new ranking page is created instantly. Visitors can then comment, vote, and add new ideas.
I built most of it using HTML and CSS, and I asked GPT to help me with the JavaScript parts, live ranking updates, animations, and input logic. I’m not a JS expert, but GPT became like a patient coding partner, explaining and rewriting until things worked.
It’s not getting much traffic yet (maybe a dozen visitors per day), but it works, and that alone feels amazing.
Over time, I’ve started treating it as a sandbox to learn, improving the UI, fixing cookie and login bugs, and polishing little details that make it feel alive.
What surprised me most is how accessible building has become. Even without deep coding experience, you can now go from an idea to a working product with some curiosity and persistence.
Next, I want to focus on user engagement how to make people not just visit, but actually participate.
If you’ve built a community-driven app before, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
That's neat, creating a new page for a product immediately!
I also love the frontend myself, and GPT is highly useful for the mundane stuff, and seo optimization.
As far as users and user engagement goes, I'd try peerpush for solid visibility, and then work on creating the user journey for your site that increases engagement and reduces bounce rate. <- Working on that step myself right now.
Love the honesty here! Building something that works, even with a dozen visitors, is a huge win. Your approach of treating it as a learning sandbox is perfect—each bug fix and UI polish compounds your skills. For engagement, consider adding clear CTAs after rankings load, maybe "Add your vote" prompts or social sharing with pre-filled tweets. Keep shipping!