[HN Gopher] DigitalOcean acquires CSS-tricks ___________________________________________________________________ DigitalOcean acquires CSS-tricks Author : nilsandrey Score : 643 points Date : 2022-03-15 12:51 UTC (10 hours ago) (HTM) web link (css-tricks.com) (TXT) w3m dump (css-tricks.com) | bilekas wrote: | Does seem a bit of a strange fit for DigitalOcean. That said, | they seem like a solid company and they really do have some | really good tutorials/knowledgebase. | | Sounds like a good time to sell it off though and hope they have | the same success with future projects. | [deleted] | azemetre wrote: | Not that strange. DigitalOcean has (or had?) a great forum for | asking tech questions on setting up droplets and other DO | services. It was very community driven. I relied on it often | when I first made my VPS back in 2013. | ramesh31 wrote: | Yeah their docs have always been top notch. Couldn't have | found a better home IMO. | WrtCdEvrydy wrote: | They did buy launchaco, maybe their move is "build your stuff | and host it on our stuff" | jasongill wrote: | Launchaco got bought by Namecheap | WrtCdEvrydy wrote: | I'm not sure what I was thinking when I typed that. | XCSme wrote: | Well, CSS-tricks is used by web developers. Web developers are | a big slice of DO's target market, as they usually need | servers/hosting. | PascLeRasc wrote: | Congrats! I've referenced the site for my entire programing life | and really like it a lot, but other than that I don't have much | background on how it came to be. Does anyone know if Chris ever | wrote about his motivations for or history of the site? | riazrizvi wrote: | Does this mean that DigitalOcean has become another platform | company that is monitoring their customers' business performance | for possible acquisition? | | If so beware. | omarhaneef wrote: | Why beware? If you're not forced to sell and they offer you an | option, it seems like a net benefit. | riazrizvi wrote: | Because your bargaining position is weak, and how do you know | your data isn't being used to help some competitor that is | part owned by the platform company. | detaro wrote: | it wasn't even hosted on DigitalOcean... | riazrizvi wrote: | Yeah I guess the acquisition strategy example here is that | DigitalOcean is probably monitoring what services their | customers that have inflections in traction. Customers won't | care if web services are not their core service. Web service | providers can't really do much about it. | electric_muse wrote: | I've also recently heard of larger VC firms quietly (secretly) | buying tech publications lately. There's a lot of value in the | eyeballs -- perhaps also the narrative. | cssrider wrote: | All these years, I thought it was a site for community. | | Dang, TIL, it was a business. | | We will miss you CSS-Tricks. | nkrisc wrote: | Congratulations to them. I've always respected css-tricks for | their sensible approach to online advertising: no malware | distributing ad networks, just selling ad spots to companies that | the audience of a css and web dev focused website might be | interested in. | TIPSIO wrote: | For your start up, a good blog could be a serious lead vehicle. | | To generate a ton of traffic or be worth something, I find you | need to balance three things (personal opinion): | | - Normal longer Blog type articles / announcements | | - Quick blog / library / resource / how-tos | | - Engagement / community | | Each are unique for everyone. | | For example, Cloudflare I would argue leans heavy to the longer | blog rolls and is a lead gen for enterprise reads, investors, and | also new hire folks. | | For SEO though, Digital Ocean cares more about the library of | resources style (I would wager). It's why they are buying CSS- | Tricks to get all that "smooth scroll css" traffic. This is very | much a traffic is traffic mentality to boost their own blog | traffic metrics. There are probably other factors here like | community / clout. Why build all this when you can just buy it? | | Then finally the last one is engagement. This is what converts | and is having an active community. This is why influencers can | make serious buck. This is the hardest to build and I would argue | the most important. A "real following". | | Would love to hear your thoughts on this too and how you use your | blog for your start up or business. | gotts wrote: | Good for CSS-Tricks team but Why does DigitalOcean need it in the | first place? | | Is it some kind of purchase of real estate for future permanent | advertisement of DO? | freedomben wrote: | I immediately had the same question. My current theory is that | this will be used to attract front-enders to their App Platform | (which they've been investing in and pushing hard for a little | while now). | | Margins are pretty great for app platform so that's an area I | would expect investment in. | ehnto wrote: | In some ways, CSS-Tricks is a competitor to Digital Ocean's | technical article marketing strategy. They are pretty high up | in the search results for plenty of different technical | answers, even beating out StackOverflow pretty often. | gzer0 wrote: | DO has really been expanding their SEO in terms of the generic | "How to install X on Ubuntu" search term (albeit, this is | particular for CSS-tricks). I often see them ranked near the | top for many of these searches. I think it's a great addition | if that's what DO is going for. | mxuribe wrote: | I think @XCSme stated it best with their comment: "...Web | developers are a big slice of DO's target market...". I don't | know about you but I firmyl believe that both CSS Tricks and | Digital Ocean produce some great content for an audience that | is undertaking their own web projects - like web devs. I use DO | for my personal projects, and also dive into CSS tricks when i | need to look stuff up. But i have to imagine that maybe DO is | also seeking to get the business of folks who might not be web | devs...maybe folks who would traditiuonally want to learn new | stuff on the legacy shared web hosts, but who heard from their | techie friends that they should move to a provider like DO (or | linode, etc.) in order to grow. Maybe a bit of a long-tail | audience, but who knows, maybe there are tons of them out | there? These not-yet/not-really web dev folks often need a | little helping hand - hence the need for more and better guides | (not just tech guides, but hand-holding content)...so when i | see things in that light, then this kind of acquisition makes | sense...in fact, i would guess everyone wins; the consumers; | CSS Tricks team; and DO...at least i hope. | lelandfe wrote: | DigitalOcean writes a ton of tutorials: | https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials | | That is to say, syndicated content is already a part of their | SEO strategy. The question now is how they'll fit CSS Tricks | into that mosaic. Maybe just simple ads and links? Maybe moving | it under the DO domain with 301s? We shall see. | libertine wrote: | >Maybe just simple ads and links? Maybe moving it under the | DO domain with 301s? We shall see. | | I think they shouldn't touch it and let CSS-Tricks continue | to do their own thing. | Matsta wrote: | I imagine they'll put links into their strongest pages and | then eventually 301 the domain. In a comment above they | mentioned DO has also acquired Scotch. io and that 301s to DO | now. | rozenmd wrote: | Being a media company that happens to sell SaaS subscriptions | is becoming a popular way to solve the traction problem. | electric_muse wrote: | I've spent some time with Digital Ocean team members, and | they're dead-set on having the best technical content on the | internet. It's been a core to their growth strategy so far: | | - Target long-tail searches -- queries where there may not be a | lot of volume but also not a lot of competition | | - Stand out with very good content (not just SEO filler) | | - Build trust with the dev community | | This is a time-consuming and expensive strategy. So acquiring | large tranches like this makes sense. | muh_gradle wrote: | That makes sense and aligns with my own experience with | Digital Ocean content. I've often found it to be very easy to | read while remaining technical. | EscargotCult wrote: | Sounds like Stack Overflow's early growth strategy, minus the | wiki aspect | [deleted] | hanselot wrote: | I've personally learned insane amounts from their tutorials | even though never trying their services. I believe they are a | paragon of quality information. Based entirely on their | guides I would recommend their other services above aws, | simply because I can see that they understand the underlying | principles required to effectively handle what they are | selling. | acomjean wrote: | I've used some of the tutorials for help with dev server | setup (self signed cert and some other things). They're well | written and they work. It helps keep me using their services, | though the tutorials are generic enough to work everywhere ( | I used the instructions on a vagrant/virtual box instance | too..) | xboxnolifes wrote: | DigitalOcean does a lot of content marketing through guides and | tutorials. I assume this purchase is for similar reasons. | TAKEMYMONEY wrote: | >> Will you still be running CSS-Tricks? | | > [no] | | Shame. Thanks for all the help over the years Chris! | smashah wrote: | Congrats! | ramesh31 wrote: | I (and I'm sure many others here) owe my career to Chris. HTML | never "clicked" for me, until I watched one of his screencasts | breaking down a design and building a page from scratch. The rest | is history. | cphoover wrote: | Well done! Has been an invaluable resource for front-end web | development for at least a decade. | ChrisArchitect wrote: | Why does DigitalOcean want to build their selection of content | out? It's kind of weird. They don't need to become some big dev | article repository/media engine. Other than to consistently push | devs consuming the content towards their services (good as they | may be). Happy for Chris and the team to get something | (substantial?) back for their efforts and maybe free up their | time, but having these openweb resources just be sucked up | constantly by 'media conglomerate' strategies isn't the best | feeling vs independent/somewhat isolated resources. | yurishimo wrote: | It's a shortcut for content marketing. I would expect a large | number of articles over the next few months about launching | projects on DO infra. Not a terrible way to get more eyeballs | on your product, but if they push things too hard, eventually | the site could lose some of it's appeal as a "neutral" source. | | Historically, CSS-Tricks has raked in a TON of money from | affiliate sales to entry level hosting providers (MediaTemple | sticks out in my mind). Imagine all of those affiliate sales | now going to Digital Ocean instead. There's potential for a | massive ROI if DO can responsibly manage the site and funnel | over the next decade. | alx__ wrote: | More content allows you to increase your rankings in search | results. Especially if you become an "authority" for a topic. | More views to content pages gets you a chance to promote your | products better than search results alone. | conductr wrote: | > Why does DigitalOcean want to build their selection of | content out? | | > Other than to consistently push devs consuming the content | towards their services | | Because CAC are high and LTV can always be higher | rezmason wrote: | Oh god, I mixed up DigitalOcean and OpenSea when I read this. Had | a rough couple of minutes there. | ElectronShak wrote: | Whether it be setting up a LAMP stack on a server, securing nginx | with Lets Encrypt, deploying a python ML model as a web service, | you name it, DigitalOcean's tutorials just work. Thanks Digital | Ocean! | | PS: I love the Idea of calling a single server a "Droplet" in the | "Digital Ocean". Nice one DO. | bachmeier wrote: | Without their tutorials, I would never have tried to do any of | the things I'm doing for myself. Been a customer for many years | after learning about it on HN. My employer has been a customer | for almost as long since I use it to run a server for my | teaching (thereby eliminating the need for me to do tech | support for my students, which I hate). Their tutorials have | brought in quite a few thousands in revenue just from me. | raiyu wrote: | Haha thanks, in the first month Ben wasn't quite happy with | that and wanted us to call them virtual servers, but I | overruled him ^_^ | skilled wrote: | I've been a DO customer since 2013 and never in that time have | I hosted any of my sites or apps on other platforms. They're | super good in every department; support, pricing, tools, and of | course, tutorials. | | Only a shame they rolled out all the affiliate credits. In the | first year I generated like $1,500 in affiliate revenue from a | single review post I did. | | At the rate of $5 per droplet, that's 25 years worth of | hosting. I didn't get the full 25 but still happy to pay for | their services. | npsimons wrote: | Honestly, as another satisfied customer, I jumped on the | opportunity to buy some of their stock. I believe it's a | solid investment. | freedomben wrote: | I agree DO is good in pricing, tools, and tutorials. But | support? I've had terrible experiences with DO support, | enough so that I fled to a different provider. Maybe they're | improving, but DO tends to drop the account lock hammer | quickly on first sign of any anomaly that the algorithm | doesn't like, rendering the victim helpless and relegated to | groveling and begging for compassion. | | One can hope that a tweet gets picked up by HN or other media | to get their attention, but alas, such is not typical. | huehehue wrote: | Big fan of DO. | | I have a Droplet I haven't accessed in 7 years. I'm pretty | sure if I look at it the wrong way it will break, but it's | been running the same app with no downtime like a champ. | bradly wrote: | I remember setting up Rails servers years ago and constantly | referring to DO's tutorials. | jppope wrote: | Css-Tricks is an amazing site and its awesome that Chris and | digital ocean were able to come together on this. Congrats to | chris and their team | skilled wrote: | Wow, pretty big sale! Big congrats to Chris. | | Interestingly, DigitalOcean has a knack for acquiring these | technical dev sites, in 2019 it acquired Scotch.io[0] which was | one of the better _technical_ web development sites out there. | | Fun fact about Scotch, the founder (Chris Sev[1]) sold the site | to DO, joined their team, and later managed to broker a deal to | 301 redirect a lot of the pages to his new project Better.dev[2]. | | Absolute genius. | | [0]: https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/scotch-io-is-joining- | digit... | | [1]: https://twitter.com/chris__sev | | [2]: https://www.better.dev/ | archerx wrote: | From the headline on better.dev it says "Hey I'm Chris Sev. | Here's My Courses", shouldn't it be "Here are my courses"? | jacobmischka wrote: | Should also say "... person who can make cool stuff". Grammar | isn't his strong point it seems. | nlarew wrote: | "here are my courses" is definitely more grammatically | correct for written English but "here is my courses" sounds | like something you'd say informally in conversation when | you're not overthinking grammar. Maybe the goal is to sound | more personable/folksy? | hunter2_ wrote: | I'm guilty of the occasional are->'s contraction when | speaking quickly, but I'd never just substitute are->is | because that doesn't save a syllable. | benmanns wrote: | 's short for "is the list of" | gtirloni wrote: | I'd love to read more about that. Is that a new idiom? | emsixteen wrote: | there's a lot | | there are a lot | DaltonCoffee wrote: | Horses | mcdonje wrote: | From a prescriptive grammar standpoint, you're correct. From | a descriptive standpoint, I'm not sure how common that | contraction is, but I've heard it before and offhand it seems | like it gets used in some regions. | | Phonologically, it makes sense that it would gain traction as | it's a means of avoiding the effort of the 'ere are' vowel | combination. It's an addition rather than an elision, but the | underlying motivation of saving effort is the same. | jonny_eh wrote: | One could even argue that "here's" is now an accepted | conjugation of "here are". | LordDragonfang wrote: | https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/here%27s | | >1. Contraction of here is. | | >2. (nonstandard) Contraction of here are. | | Note this has been listed since at least 2006, based on | the history. | 867-5309 wrote: | that's almost as annoying as "have you got them?" - "I | do" - "do what.. do have? do got??" | saghm wrote: | To be fair, I think "do you have them?" would be more | common for a lot of English speakers ("have you got" | sounds British to me as an American, but it's possible | that this is just a regional American thing). I'm not | sure I would either think fast enough to care enough to | tailor my automated response to a question like that | based on the exact phrasing of the query. | OJFord wrote: | Er, I'll happily take you up on that argument! | efdee wrote: | These kinds of arguments literally kill me. | jonny_eh wrote: | RIP | DwnVoteHoneyPot wrote: | Since we're discussing grammer, when you say "literally", | you mean figuratively? | anchpop wrote: | Grammer conversations are the very pineapple of useless | discourse, and I don't see why we don't nip them in the | butt. Weather you say "literally" or "figuratively", both | are equally understandable for all intensive purposes. So | as far as I'm concerned these arguments serve no porpoise | and we'd be better off if they faded into Bolivian. | jonny_eh wrote: | I would loose any argument with you sir. | efdee wrote: | Sir or madam, I upload you. | remedan wrote: | They are using the phrase "literally kill me" as a | hyperbole. It is a form of exaggeration. They are not in | fact being killed, they are just annoyed. It is a | rhetorical device used for emphasis. | | The word "literally" has been commonly used for hyperbole | in English for hundreds of years. There is nothing | grammatically wrong here. | efdee wrote: | I certainly do. More so, I was referencing the fact that | the definition of the word "literally" now also includes | "figuratively" in several English dictionaries as an | example of a similar language development. | [deleted] | staticassertion wrote: | The hyperbolic use of "literally" to mean "figuratively" | goes back hundreds of years. | | > : in effect : VIRTUALLY --used in an exaggerated way to | emphasize a statement or description that is not | literally true or possible will literally turn the world | upside down to combat cruelty or injustice -- Norman | Cousins | | https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally | | They justify this in a few places, including | | > The "in effect; virtually" meaning of literally is not | a new sense. It has been in regular use since the 18th | century and may be found in the writings of Mark Twain, | Charlotte Bronte, James Joyce, and many others. | | edit: HN was loading really weird for me, I didn't see | the sibling comment make this point already! | manigandham wrote: | It's not accepted, it's just common ignorance. | Spivak wrote: | You dirty language prescriptivist! If English speakers | and writers use it, it's correct. | tomjakubowski wrote: | I accept it | ludamad wrote: | History does not make much distinction between "language | misuse" and "paradigm shifts" | travisd wrote: | I think out loud you'd be more likely to hear "here're your | donuts" rather than "here's your donuts"), but when | written, here're looks way worse. Language (written, | spoken, and otherwise) is interesting and resistant to | fitting into nice, neat, tidy boxes. | tetsusaiga wrote: | The real answer is that its copywriting, which means grammar | is nearly irrelevant. | | He starts with "Hey I'm Chris Sev" because it's a better | headline, which is defined as something that is more likely | to make people read the rest of the page. (Defined | specifically because I see lots of complaints here that | headlines should be descriptive of the actual content, which | isn't really what matters, functionally. (I get the impulse | though, really.)) | jorvi wrote: | If it is the possessive article ('my courses') then you are | correct. If it is a name for the product 'My Courses', then | Chris is correct. | pdevr wrote: | Informal usage, as others have pointed out. | | Since it is informal, it can be read as "Hey I'm Chris Sev. | Here's My [Collection/Set/List of] Courses", which is | grammatically correct. | reaperducer wrote: | _From the headline on better.dev it says "Hey I'm Chris Sev. | Here's My Courses", shouldn't it be "Here are my courses"?_ | | It's the difference between written English and spoken | English. | | In conversation, it's not unusual for someone to use "here's" | in this context. To be correct, especially for display in | print or on a screen, the correct words are "here are." | | I think that people use "here's" instead of "here are" | because "here are" can be difficult to say quickly in | conversation, and can sound like "herere," which is | indistinct and unpleasant-sounding. | | The internet has popularized the use of spoken English online | because most English speakers speak English well enough, but | fewer English speakers write English well. | the_common_man wrote: | Do you know the numbers? Is that what you meant by big sale? | vohu43 wrote: | Did the quality of the content on scotch.io change? Can we | expect the same thing for CSS-tricks? | swyx wrote: | scotch's traffic has been in sharp decline since the | acquisition | https://www.similarweb.com/website/scotch.io/#overview | | i'm not really sure what they bought to be honest | mouzogu wrote: | skilled wrote: | I'm _guessing_ that is what happened. Maybe it was a clause | in the contract? If Chris reads this comment maybe he can | chime in to clarify. I should have made that clear in my | original comment, though. | | I found out about it by doing keyword research for a piece I | was doing. Better.dev was one of the sites that ranked | _extremely_ well for it and I hadn 't heard of the name | before. Upon closer inspection, I learned that the post is an | old Scotch.io article which is being redirected to his new | project. | Matsta wrote: | Scotch.io redirects to Digital Ocean Community site when I | checked just now. I imagine a big reason it was acquired | for the sweet domain authority for SEO. | | You can see that Scotch.io was dying off in traffic [1] - I | would assume it wasn't getting new content regularly | enough. The domain is pretty powerful, so even pushing some | traffic to Better.dev [2] via 301's would have helped both | sites out. | | I imagine better.dev would have agreed to promote DO and | put some links on their top pages to give the DigitalOcean | domain even more SEO power. | | [1] - https://imgur.com/a/ashZPDa [2] - | https://imgur.com/a/Wd9kzJt | datavirtue wrote: | Last week I started poking around in some serious CSS again for | the first time in ten years. I was a little rusty. CSS-Tricks | definitely stood out for the quality. Truly helpful. I'm back in | the swing of things now. | petercooper wrote: | This is part of a broader trend. Last year, Balaji Srinivasan | tweeted about the idea of SaaS companies buying media companies - | https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1374363031417753609 - and as | an observer/operator in this space, I've heard about a lot of | conversations going on behind the scenes with larger companies | expressing an interest in smaller media companies (including my | own - I value autonomy too much but for the right multiple.. | :-D). | | Consider Hubspot buying The Hustle, Robinhood buying | MarketSnacks, Stripe's various acquisitions (like IndieHackers), | Insight Partners bought The New Stack.. and this is all happening | in the developer space too. Subscription based companies with | high cashflow but high customer acquisition costs will continue | to buy attention-based companies with relatively low acquisition | costs because, frankly, the owners of the latter are generally | quite happy with "modest" (<$40m, say) exits that the former can | easily cover. | senko wrote: | As a (casual) reader of several of the newsletters you | maintain: Peter, hang in there, don't sell! :-D | | For those who are not familiar (if that's possible), check out | https://cooperpress.com/publications/ | | To your (& Balaji's) point - one of tried and true methods of | customer acquisition for SaaS is content marketing, but it's a | _very_ long game and you need to have quality content. | Acquiring a blog or a media company that already has that has | clear ROI. | | DO already has a solid knowledge base of articles ("How to ... | on Ubuntu Server" almost always leads to DO) but mostly for the | back-end part of the stack. From that perspective, buying CSS- | Tricks is not too surprising. | petercooper wrote: | Haha, thanks! I've had a few serious acquisition | conversations over the years, but it's never made sense | because I enjoy what I do already and don't really want to | move on to something else :-) Like many people, I would take | "retire forever" money (and probably end up still working | anyway) but that hasn't been on offer. | yurishimo wrote: | If you're comfortable sharing what amount "retire forever | money" is for you, I'd be interested in what that number | is. See profile for DM options if you don't want to post it | publicly! | petercooper wrote: | It wobbles around depending on my mood. At the most basic | level, though, enough to pay off the mortgage, do a few | fun things, and create a fund to draw down at 3.5% per | year covering two good incomes - so somewhere in the | $6-8m zone. If I were sick or had to stop working for | some critical reason though, obviously that would drop | pretty quick given lack of options. | tiffanyh wrote: | Product Hunt. | | This was VC's way to invest in a media company. | makk wrote: | Their strategy from the start was to use evergreen technical | content to attract devs, to raise the visibility of their | products with target customers. | | It diminishes their early insights to cast this acquisition as | merely part of a trend. | snorgle wrote: | DigitalOcean's strategy with evergreen technical content was | to duplicate Linode's strategy with evergreen technical | content _wholesale_ , down to individual articles. Linode | Library, including a complete custom CMS and community | engagement strategy to pay Linode users to help generate | evergreen, was in place and driving conversions long before | DigitalOcean was founded. They cribbed just about everything | substantive from Linode documentation including the editorial | structure that allows churning out content (install X on Y, | basically, and enumerate administration verbs, Xs, Ys every | time you deploy a new OS for users). | | I distinctly remember multiple Library articles getting | rewritten about a week later and appearing on DO's site with | just enough distance to be unique, but it was clear that our | work was on the screen while they wrote it based on document | structure and technical approach (this was in the early | "catch up" phase, roughly 2011-2012; it's probably | established enough now that this is no longer the case). More | than once they not-so-subtly rewrote the technical approach | to distinguish it and ended up breaking the instructions. | They took verb ideas, they took X ideas, they took whole | documents and shoved them in a blender with their systems. | This is likely provable with Internet Archive but I've never | bothered to look - I left Linode a decade ago. | | I wouldn't have left this seemingly negative for no reason | comment had you not identified DO's documentation strategy as | an early insight. It was an early insight, but absolutely, | definitively _not theirs_. They raised the VC to get exposed | to this audience and successfully presented nearly all of | Linode's business insights as their own, and it's | understandable that it seems that way if you didn't follow | Linode before DO. | | The first several years of DigitalOcean's existence made it | very clear they looked at Linode and said that, but with | funding rounds. And that's fine. They've done well. But let's | not attribute insights to their copies of things; their | primary corporate insight all along was realizing Linode was | handicapped with bootstrapped capital alone. And to give them | credit, it was undeniably savvy to apply Linode's successes | to scaling DigitalOcean. It just means it's not their | ingenuity in any sense of the word. | phphphphp wrote: | You're right that the Linode library existed prior to | DigitalOcean's founding but DigitalOcean did innovate: they | understood the value of technical writing as a conversion | tool, and paid for it. Linode did not pay for articles | until more recently, and so the Linode library was | comparatively weak for a long, long time. The Linode | library was helpful for customers, certainly, but it was | never comparable to what DigitalOcean achieved with their | content. You can argue that DO were able to achieve what | they did because of raising money, but to suggest they | copied Linode wholesale is revisionism. | | I won't get into the weeds of Linode vs. DigitalOcean but | there were very important differences in approach, and | eventually Linode was copying DO's ideas (for example, the | introduction of low-resource low-cost servers, the | design...). Linode was a trailblazer in the industry, for | sure, but DigitalOcean wasn't just "Linode plus capital". | | edit: Linode started paying in 2014[1] after | DigitalOcean[2] | | [1] https://www.linode.com/blog/linode/write-for-linode- | get-paid... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20131111064358/ | https://www.digit... | snorgle2 wrote: | I gave lengthy examples of copying that I observed | firsthand. You don't believe me, ask Sam K, whose work | was diligently and routinely copied. Linode Library also | credited customers for contributions publicly and | financially since its launch in 2009. They expanded the | program later to anyone interested to scale it beyond | one-offs. The whole point of Linode Library was | conversions so your distinguishing of DO's "innovation" | is baffling; what, you think we hired three people to | write about nginx because it was fun? | | Of course Linode eventually copied DO back. That was the | terms of the relationship established by DO. We were too | busy dreaming of copying AWS at the time to see the | threat. We ruled out $10 and lower Linodes again before | DO was founded due to our support resources. DO forced | that hand later (I assume, that was after I left). | | I am obviously biased having worked there (worth noting I | left on awful terms), and I am aware of that, but some of | what I'm saying is purely objective and, again, probably | provable with study of IA. If you're going to refute my | first hand, lived experience and call it revisionism, | you've proven my point of making this comment at all. | phphphphp wrote: | Linode included affiliate program links for authors, | that's not comparable to paying cash. I can't speak to | whether DO did copy article contents (though I remember | the rumours at the time and don't doubt it) but there is | a meaningful gap between asking people to contribute vs. | paying for the content, and that's why DigitalOcean | achieved so much with their library despite launching | later: people actually wanted to write for DigitalOcean. | | I was a Linode customer at the time the library launched, | I was a Linode customer when DigitalOcean launched, and I | was a Linode customer years after DigitalOcean launched: | Linode was the best VPS provider of the time, | undoubtably, and influential for those that followed | (including DigitalOcean) but DigitalOcean was much more | than a VPS provider and they pushed the industry forward | in ways that Linode never even tried. Diminishing what | they achieved as being "Linode but with money" is | nonsense. | | What you remember and what is true aren't one and the | same, as is evidenced by the Linode blog showing payments | began for articles in 2014. | snorgle2 wrote: | You're talking past me, particularly harping on the blog | you found from 2014 despite me directly addressing it in | my reply to you (and using it to question my | recollection), so it's clear we're not going to agree. | I'm also not a fan of being told events and discussions I | was a part of, firsthand, and pissed off about, | firsthand, is me failing to remember the truth | accurately; that's really insulting, fundamentally, and | is not an approach you should take with someone sharing | their lived reality, _especially_ when you were on the | paying end and not the employed end. The rumors you heard | corroborate. It happened. Notice the usually-HN-active DO | folks haven't jumped on me yet? They know it happened, | too. | | Again, I left on horrible terms. That's really important | to remember as you think about my motivations. I'm not | here to score points for a side, which you seem to have | inferred. | phphphphp wrote: | I am arguing against the following assertions: | | "I wouldn't have left this seemingly negative for no | reason comment had you not identified DO's documentation | strategy as an early insight. It was an early insight, | but absolutely, definitively not theirs. They raised the | VC to get exposed to this audience and successfully | presented nearly all of Linode's business insights as | their own, and it's understandable that it seems that way | if you didn't follow Linode before DO. | | The first several years of DigitalOcean's existence made | it very clear they looked at Linode and said that, but | with funding rounds. And that's fine. They've done well. | But let's not attribute insights to their copies of | things; their primary corporate insight all along was | realizing Linode was handicapped with bootstrapped | capital alone. And to give them credit, it was undeniably | savvy to apply Linode's successes to scaling | DigitalOcean. It just means it's not their ingenuity in | any sense of the word." | | I did follow Linode before DigitalOcean. I did espouse | the wonders of Linode, day in, day out. I did resist | switching from Linode to DigitalOcean for years because | of brand loyalty. I do consider Linode very important in | shaping the industry, but I categorically disagree with | the assertion that DigitalOcean's core insight was that | Linode were cash-poor and all someone needed to do was | "Linode but with VC". Your time at Linode and your | damaged relationship with Linode are not evidence that | DigitalOcean is Linode-but-with-money. | | We aren't discussing your lived reality, we're discussing | your dismissal of the achievements of DigitalOcean. | filmgirlcw wrote: | I'm not debating anything you've argued (I don't know | enough to know one way or another, except I will say that | as an end-user, I remember liking DO's documentation more | in 2011 than Linode's, but that doesnr mean the content is | wasn't still largely copied), but didn't Slicehost (RIP) | innovate the whole docs/tutorials as a sales funnel thing? | | I'm sure DO took a lot of inspiration from Linode, but it | always seemed like the heir apparent to Slicehost, which | was the best designed/marketed/documented VPS host until it | was sold off/shutdown. | snorgle2 wrote: | 100%. Good memory, too. Slicehost probably deserves | credit as well. I'm not arguing for who deserves it. | Arguing for who doesn't. Slicehost's approach to a number | of things was better in a lot of ways and they did | documentation a little differently, but you're right, the | funnel concept is the same (between all three). | | I miss them too. They were respectful competitors and I | know they were generally liked by competitors. There's | just a fine line between getting the idea for a funnel | and copying its entire execution down to subscribing to | RSS. I think there was mutual respect between both | companies on that. With DO, not so much. | | To be clear, it's not Apple vs Google here, it's the idea | of DO coming out of the gate with that execution being a | stroke of genius. They had (thanks for the reminder) | multiple precedences and actively copied from at least | one. | [deleted] | petercooper wrote: | DO is smarter than most and has really nailed it with their | content development program. When I say "trend" I'm not being | negative, I'm speaking about broad industry movements which | this deal can still be lumped in with, regardless of how | smart or specific any individual deal or buyer is. | rchaud wrote: | I think Balaji is more interested in having SaaS create their | own Ministry of Information to do their PR instead of needing | to rely on journalists who seem to be generally unfriendly to | him. | riffic wrote: | no idea who this guy is or what makes him an authority but | from a quick google about unfriendly journalists this is | quite something: | | https://boingboing.net/2021/02/15/silicon-valley-investor- | ca... | rchaud wrote: | He's an oversensitive tech billionnaire that spends a lot | of time on Twitter. | mbesto wrote: | > but high customer acquisition costs will continue to buy | attention-based companies with relatively low acquisition costs | because, | | I don't disagree with the thesis, but is the ROI actually | there? Why not just pay the media company to be an exclusive | partner? Maybe it's just putting the acquisition cost on the | balance sheet instead of the income statement? | altdataseller wrote: | You lack control on what you want to do with the publication. | Any of your competitors can bid higher, for instance. Or if | you decide to do a campaign announcing a new feature, they | might say No because they're busy/doing something else. This | is probably pennies for DigitalOcean, btw, in the whole | scheme of things. | daqhris wrote: | What a wonderful feat! So many years of inspiring new | developers... turned into the best exit for its founder. | Congrats! | helipad wrote: | All frontend developers: keep the Flexbox article alive please. | cehrlich wrote: | Their Flexbox and Grid guides are the best. I've been using | both since pretty much the start and I still look up syntax | from them at least once a week. | neovive wrote: | 100% agree with this. I have these pages bookmarked and | consistently use them as a reference: | | https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/a-guide-to-flexbox/ | https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/complete-guide-grid/ | Zardoz84 wrote: | and the CSS Grid article | nojs wrote: | Haha, that article is so good. It's probably my single most | frequently used frontend dev resource. | hinkley wrote: | As others have said in other threads, I don't think you have | much to worry about. | | DO seems to value quality over quantity for documentation. | Documentation appears to be their 'doing well by doing good' | strategy. What BackBlaze is to hard drive reviews, DO is to a | subset of platform agnostic cloud technologies. I don't know | what they do now, but at one point a couple years ago they were | soliciting 'paid' articles, but rather than paying you directly | they would make a donation to an organization on their list on | your behalf. | | If I were telling an intern where to look for technical | knowledge on the internet, my advice would be something like | this: start at their website (mostly for due diligence, since | 4/5 times you won't find what you want there), Stack Overflow, | Google, Digital Ocean, and then look for either books by the | authors (if you're a bookish sort), or find conversations with | the authors on the internet. | | Though now Google is falling fast. I'm on the cusp of demoting | it below DO. I feel that camel straining under the weight on | its back. SEO is turning into Search Engine Sabotage lately. | | If DO starts buying up knowledge bases that could flip for | positive reasons instead of negative ones. | jostylr wrote: | Their guides are indispensable for my occasional dabbling. | | Just saved flexbox and grid guides using the SingleFile | extension, something I discovered a couple of weeks ago here on | HN. HN warns and provides solutions. | | https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/single-file/ | mrpotato wrote: | Didn't know (but should have) that they had a grid guide! | Thanks | | flexbox https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/a-guide-to- | flexbox/ | | grid https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/complete-guide-grid/ | Traubenfuchs wrote: | Their flexbox article kind of ended my (hobbyist) interest in | front end styling. I just turn everything into flexboxes and | everything behaves just like I want it to. And yes I do visit | it every time I do front end styling. | nyanpasu64 wrote: | Whoever owns the Flexbox article: please reformat it in a | single column so I can read it without having to go into Reader | View each time. | dylan604 wrote: | No!!!! Please don't!! My muscle memory would go totally out | of whack if this happened. You can continue to use reader | view and enjoy your muscle memory workflow, but don't go | changing mine. Parent info on the left, child info on the | right. | | Also, requesting your non-flexbox layout for your documents | on how to do flexbox seems rather ironic. | moehm wrote: | Reminds me of this: https://xkcd.com/1172/ | PaulBGD_ wrote: | I would love to see what % of their visits is the flexbox | article. | skilled wrote: | I bet it is in the millions. I help manage some sites which | have CSS tutorials on them, and even if the article is about | something like "How to use the CSS counter() property" - if | you have the words "center" and "div" mentioned in the | article, Google Search Console will report impressions for | that article with keywords like "how to center a div". Funny! | swyx wrote: | 7.6% | | this number is public: https://css-tricks.com/thank- | you-2021-edition/ | | total traffic 88m, flexbox is 6.7m of that. speaks to their | deep bench tbh. | arvinsim wrote: | That and the grids article are probably the most used | bookmarked articles I have perused. | for1nner wrote: | Well at least 50% of that % is me forgetting which is | justify-content and which is align-items... | | Words are hard | bjarneh wrote: | > You can build anything on DigitalOcean | | I was almost expecting that text to be a link to zombo.com | ravenstine wrote: | CSS Tricks was the biggest help back when I was first teaching | myself proper web design and then doing freelance web development | back in my early days. Chris Coyier and Ryan Bates (of | Railscasts) alone taught me 80+% of what I needed to know to get | my start in the industry. | tannhaeuser wrote: | Hope they keep the site as it is, css-tricks.com has been | consistently one of the best, if not the best CSS site around, to | the point that I search there for a particular topic before going | to general purpose search engines, and you'll frequently find | Chris' original articles copypasta'd by "content marketers" | anyway. I guess the big time push for CSS3 with ever-changing | responsive requirements and new UI idioms of the 2000's and | 2010's is behind us, as witnessed by css-tricks's forum with | contributions from other world-class experts having closed down | last year or so. Could be worse than DO for sure. | kosasbest wrote: | It covers more than CSS. The 'CSS' part always threw me off | reading articles, but I realized early on that JS, HTML & APIs | are all part of it. | mardifoufs wrote: | Are there any similar websites but for web development in | general (not just CSS)? Because this one is amazing! | | The insane amount of SEO spam articles you get whenever you | look for guides/examples on Google makes it almost impossible | to rely on just searching on Google when you need it. So I'm | finding myself having to go back to looking for curated lists | of quality websites... | thex10 wrote: | I enjoy Smashing Magazine https://www.smashingmagazine.com | acomjean wrote: | I took a react class and the intro was a lot of | html/css/design stuff. The CSShints site isn't just CSS, so | its worth exploring. | | There is a lot of good stuff published that's hard to find. I | wish I had a better catch all resource page. | | Codepen.io is a good playground to play around with | html/css/javascript and it has some javascript frameworkstuff | too. | | A lot of people put together good content. It seems to | surface though blogs and twitter. Some links/papers we used | (without the CSShints pages). A lot of them have more content | if you explore. | | https://cssclass.es/materials/#elements-and-tags | | https://chenhuijing.com/blog/how-i-design-with-css- | grid/#%F0... | | https://www.wpkube.com/html5-cheat-sheet/ | | https://programmingdesignsystems.com/what-is-a-design- | system... | | https://atomicdesign.bradfrost.com/chapter-1/ | | http://alistapart.com/article/the-king-vs-pawn-game-of-ui- | de... | | https://brucelawson.co.uk/2018/the-practical-value-of- | semant... | | https://alistapart.com/article/my-accessibility-journey- | what... | 8ytecoder wrote: | MDN is pretty good. | | https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/ | tannhaeuser wrote: | There used to be many blog posts by web designers showing up | for inspiration - a weird mix of nerds, oriental ladies, and | self-taught experts pushing the limit and genuinely in search | of the one proper visual representation of some piece of | content. I think people underestimate how much of what we | take for granted on the web today was pioneered by these | folks. sitepoint, alistapart used to be good as well | (w3fools, not so much). | jjcm wrote: | I'm actually pretty optimistic about this - DigitalOcean does | great work around docs and tutorial type sites. Half of the | time when I search for things like, "how to install nvm on | Ubuntu 20.04" a digital ocean article comes up, and it's really | well done. | radicalriddler wrote: | The amount of times at my last company, as a frontend | developer, who was being told to build ubuntu vm's for web | servers, DO saved my life. | appel wrote: | You made me breathe a sigh of relief. These 'x has been | acquired by Y' alerts usually don't seem to end so well, so | I'm hoping that's not the case here. Regardless, I'm happy | for Chris, he deserves it. | Eric_WVGG wrote: | I'm kind of hoping the reverse happens, and the front end devs | at Digital Ocean get some lessons in responsive design and | browser compatibility. I love the Digital Ocean product, but | their dashboard is just full of quirks that give me the | impression that the devs there just test things out in Chrome | at one window size and then peace-out for happy hour. | irrational wrote: | Conspiracy theory - digital ocean bought css tricks in order | to shut it down in the hopes of decreasing css knowledge so | that people don't realize that their CSS is bad so that they | don't have to pay for a redesign. | throwra620 wrote: | reflectiv wrote: | Yea... | | DO has some really great documentation for their services so I | am hopeful they will only enhance/make-better css-tricks. | dylan604 wrote: | When looking up how to do something on my EC2 instance, I | often find a DO writeup that is better written than the AWS | docs. Obviously, this is for generic Linux sysadmin type | stuff, and nothing specific to cloud vendor stuff. | | If a DO link is returned in my search, I tend to click on it. | Matsta wrote: | It's already been mentioned in a few comments, but I imagine a | big part of this purchase was influenced by the SEO power of the | domain. CSS-Trick is a crazy powerful domain [1] | | Google loves old domains with authority, and still, to this day, | it's a lot easier to rank a site built on an aged/expired domain | than it is on a fresh domain. | | Buying powerful domains on auction sites has shot through the | roof in the last couple of years. Here's a couple of example on | Godaddy (Godaddy auctions tend to have the most powerful domains | SEO-wise) https://www.godaddy.com/domain-auctions/gutenberg- | net-414405... https://uk.godaddy.com/domain- | auctions/freewebtemplates-com-... | | I imagine they will eventually 301 the domain to the main | DigitalOcean domain. | | [1] - https://imgur.com/a/8XHWry9 | merlinscholz wrote: | I'm sad to see Chris step down from CSS Tricks, loved his | designs, content moderation and writing style. | | I don't know if I trust DO as his ,,successor", I've lost way too | much money on their platform for me to consider them trustworthy. | And that's coming from a person who now uses Oracle Cloud. | novateg wrote: | I've been using the CSS-Tricks site since 2008. It's one of the | best sites on internet and has great community of developers. | Congrats to Chris Coyier and the team! | plexiglas wrote: | What is DigitalOcean's strategy here? Kudos to CSS-Tricks on the | acquisition! | ru552 wrote: | They can sprinkle some tasteful adverts on the Flexbox article | and make their money back in < 03 years. | tehbeard wrote: | as other comments have pointed out, DO have a strategy of | writing great documentation, for stuff that isn't immediately | there's (e.g. iptables/ufw, terrafrom, docker etc), these | benefit people both using their platform already, and draw | others in (find docs, hey these are useful, what else do they | do?). | | I could see them using this for both subtle (the header/footer | links etc) and more "sponsered" content (i.e. links to DO | AppPlatform in an article/tutorial about next.js etc) | Jerrrry wrote: | Let's go!!!! | | Congratulations Chris. Me and others owe our careers in webdev | and our CSS sourcery magic to your great articles. | lelandfe wrote: | I'll be the first to say: congrats to Chris! Just an excellent | guy - and he's been contributing so much good writing to the web | development community for so long, he deserves a pay day. | mxuribe wrote: | Congrats to the CSS-Tricks team! | technotarek wrote: | Does this include CodePen? If so, DO if you're listening, please | give your current customers a break on the paid versions :) | riffic wrote: | CodePen still seems to be run as an independent company if I'm | not mistaken. | | I wouldn't be surprised to see it start pivoting to look like | the Cloud9 IDE (or Fog Creek's Glitch) of DigitalOcean, though. | mamoriamohit wrote: | CSS Tricks played a critical part in teaching me about web | designs. It was a paradise for an introvert like me to hangout | at, and also learn new skills. | | Congratulations, Chris! | awill wrote: | I don't really understand DigitalOcean's market here. They're | obviously. not going after the main cloud players, but it seems | strange that they're targeting consumers directly. They spent a | lot of time/money crowdsourcing documentation for things that | weren't cloud-specific, like patching wordpress, installing | apache etc, and now CSS-Tricks. | | Wouldn't consumers who'd benefit from these sorts of tutorials | prefer a properly managed solution rather than an IaaS? | freedomben wrote: | DO recently rolled out their "App Platform" which is targeted | at developers who don't know much infra/devops. I would guess | promoting that is what drove this decision since CSS Tricks has | such a good name/reputation with the exact target market. Ads | (especially subtle ads) placed on CSS Tricks would be worth a | fortune. | | But even still, I'm mainly an infra/devops/backend guy who | occasionally needs to hack on front end, and I've ended up at | CSS Tricks a number of times. So it's probably a great buy if | used as an advertising hole and to boost SEO credibility. | kosasbest wrote: | > I don't really understand DigitalOcean's market here | | DO is loved by developers, and so is CSS Tricks. DO bought it | because of the cozy relationship CSS Tricks has with developers | and vice-versa. | seanw444 wrote: | This is one of the few instances where I can say I trust the | acquiring company. I've been a fan of DigitalOcean since I | started using them. They haven't given me a reason to dislike | them. And like the post says, they do write some handy tutorials. | One that's helped me a few times is how to spin up a quick FTP | server on Debian, because for some reason I can never configure | it right. | | Congrats to the original owner on getting acquired, and by a | company that will most likely do well with it. | michaelcampbell wrote: | I'm a digo customer, but even if I weren't I'd still be using a | lot of their online documentation. | jpswade wrote: | I never expected a web host would buy a content farm, let alone | one about a subject that, let's face it doesn't directly depend | on one. | worldmerge wrote: | Congratulations, I love css tricks. Your articles helped me out a | ton. | kizer wrote: | Thank you for all the tricks you've supplied me over the years. | Here's to many more. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-03-15 23:00 UTC)