I built Daniel Threads—a luxury fashion e-commerce site—to show SMBs in Lagos what’s possible.
Here’s what I learned doing it.
The Stack
- Vanilla JavaScript (no frameworks, intentional)
- Supabase for auth + database
- Netlify for hosting
- Google OAuth for login
- Abstract API for phone validation
- OpenRouter for AI chatbot
The Wins
✓ Integrated Google OAuth from scratch (OAuth concepts matter even with AI help)
✓ Debugged a redirect URL issue that taught me how auth flows actually work
✓ Built persistent shopping bags tied to user accounts
✓ Phone validation on checkout (users appreciate attention to detail)
✓ AI assistant that answers product questions 24/7
The Real Lesson
I could ask AI to build all this. But understanding why things break—like why localhost redirects don’t work in production—that’s what makes you a real developer, not just an AI prompt writer.
Working as a freelancer I built this to land clients. But it’s also proof that junior SE roles are within reach if you ship real products and understand your fundamentals even though I haven’t found any real clients
Next: mobile responsiveness and Python. Always learning.
What’s your approach to portfolio projects?