[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.
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