Today is the best holiday of the year: CSS-Tricks birthday! And it’s extra special this time because it’s a Golden Birthday (turning four on the fourth). I’ve traditionally done a brief state of the union to mark the day, so I thought I’d keep it up.
On CSS-Tricks first birthday, I was living in Portland, Oregon (only for a few months at the time having moved from Madison, Wisconsin). One the second birthday, I was leaving Portland and moving to Chicago, Illinois. The third birthday I was still in Chicago but starting to plan my move to Tampa, Florida. Now on the fourth birthday I’m just about to move to Palo Alto, California as part of the Survey Monkey / Wufoo acquisition. While the scenery changes a lot for me, working on CSS-Tricks feels like home wherever I am.
Thing may be a little slow around here during my move and settling into California. Plus summer is always so life-busy. Traffic reflects that as well. I think the internet as a whole is just a bit slower in the summer.
Last year I was kinda bitching about FeedBurner’s unreliability, but noted that RSS subscribers were hovering about 50,000. Now we’re well above 70,000 so that’s pretty sweet. Growth is a powerful motivator. FeedBurner has been solid as well, and interestingly, still really the only serious player in the feed analytics market as far as I know. They have a Beta design that’s been in Beta for I feel like six months and I hope it never goes live because I really don’t like it. They should try a do-over and consult the team doing the rest of the Google makeover stuff lately (like the brand new Google Plus) because that stuff is fabulous.
The forums are doing fine and I always love to see people getting and giving help there, but they will probably remain a bit of a small niche community of CSS folks rather than a major driving force of the site. The majority of traffic to the site is to the blog articles. That’s great, because writing articles is the thing I love doing the most and plan to continue spending most of my time doing. The downloads area always sees a large amount of traffic and I gotta keep on myself to keep that area up to date both in adding new demos and making sure old stuff isn’t outdated garbage.
Screencasts have really slowed down as far as time in between new ones. They have long been one of the least-value-for-time-spent things I do for the site, but I still plan to keep doing them. Enough people seem to like them, I like doing them, and I think that medium is super useful in teaching. #100 is coming up soon and I hope to have some small surprise for it.
I have three or four ideas simmering on ways to expand the site that I’m excited about. It’s been a long time since there’s been a new section on this site. Snippets was the last thing. I’m not much for elaborate teasers, so let’s just leave it at that.
In other behind the scenes news, I now have another part time person (my friend, Sara Cope) to help maintain the site and do various CSS-Tricks related stuff. This helps free up my time to focus on creating stuff and writing which is how I prefer to spend the time I have for this site. One of her first projects was updating the entire catalog of old videos into a new format in our backend, which was a huge undertaking. It’s all done now, which has cool benefits like that iTunes page will have the complete catalog again, there is a quality sitemap for them, and everything is consistent as I work on a design refresh for the site.
Fun times ahead, thanks everyone for reading!
Awesome stuff Chris, I also really like the screencasts and I’m looking forward to the redesign. When will it be done? Any indication?
Probably a few months. I have a start but I really don’t want to rush this one. Glad you’re excited though, I am too!
I too like to see this site in a new look (though the current one is nice!)
Keep it up Chris. Your site is always open in a tab when I’m designing, for either inspiration from your demos or for the forums to ask questions. Lately it has been coming up a lot lately in Google searches too.
Hi chris I want to thank to you. because I am trying to learn something about web tecnology and exactly your site is very helpful for me. I follow you from Turkey. thanks for everything again.
sorry about my english.
Hurray~ Big guy turn to 4th. Happy Birthday.
Long live the King of CSS… hahaha…
Can’t wait to see the King’s new dress.
Surprise us.
Keep it up, man
Chris, you are a scholar and a gentleman. I don’t say it enough but I wholeheartedly thank you for providing your research and knowledge to the community. Here’s to four more years!
Happy fourth dude! May there be many more to come. What I like the most about CSS-Tricks is just how down to earth and simple you make it for everyone to use. Your screencasts are awesome and I keep telling myself that I will watch them all one day but I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.
Cannot wait to see what else you come up with. :D
Shane
Happy 4th :P
Awesome Bro .. Congratulation on 4th Birthday ..Keep it up..
Cheers on the fourth-fourth birthday!! I’ve been following you from, like when you were three, and Css-tricks has helped me a lot!!
Every time I comment here, I never forget to mention that I learned something new!! Good to know about the redesign of the site!! Curious!!
Hi Chris,
Congratulations with your 4th! CSS-Tricks has become the #1 source for ideas for me. Would not know what to to without it anymore.
Thanks and keep up the good work!
Congratulations Chris. Looking forward to re-design of CSS-Tricks.
Well… Thank you Chris, and Happy Holidays :P
Wow. Four years old and being considered the best resource for a whole bunch of stuff on the interwebz. Keep up the good work and let’s mark this day as a golden one.
Keep up the good work Chris. I’ve learnt a lot from this site in the last two years.
Also, I am glad that you plan to continue doing the video tutorials because without them, my WordPress skills would be zero..
Chris, as ever thank you so much for all the hard work you’re putting into the site. It’s an extremely useful resource for most of us. Very excited about all the little extras you are planing on adding, as I’m sure it will just make it even more resourceful and useful.
I’m really glad for the snippets section, as it has been a huge timesaver. Can’t wait for the next thing(s) in the pipeline.
Thanks again, and all the best with your move to Palo Alto. They say it’s nice out there.
Happy fourth! Your site is really helpful. I found this site half year ago. I wait the 100th screencast.
Barkóczi Dávid from Hungary
Did a double-take at that picture: it’s my town! (Grand Rapids, Michigan, experiencegr.com ) At first I got excited that you were coming to speak here :)
Love your site, admire your work, thanks as always for making the Web a better place to be.
Thank You Chris. Your work always amazes me & congrats on the move. I hear Palo Alto is amazing.
HB CSS TRICKS !
Hope to get more fresh and cool CSS articles in the upcoming year :)
Wow.. You are turning 4 and I am turning 40.. I started following you within the first couple of months that you went live. I feel that much of my growth as a developer can be attributed to you.. So keep up the good works.
Kevin “kMist” Mist
YES! Keep doing the screen casts! They are amazing.
1st, love the site and as a newbie trying to learn, I find this site by far the best free resource on the web. You said that the webcasts don’t get as much traffic as the other parts of the site and, maybe, shouldn’t be a priority. Keep in mind, though, the webcast can attract new users like me and help with retention. So it may not get the most views, but, the webcasts certainly attract and then retain new users which can’t be overlooked.
That’s my case for more webcasts and maybe a case for more beginner/intermediate shows as well.
Also, one format for a screen cast that is popular in my former profession was to review/critique/ discuss/improve on a member’s project. Those shows were a big hit.
Thanks and keep up the good work!
I really enjoy screencasts, I just wish they’d cover more advance stuff. Nonetheless I watch every last one of them. Good luck and happy birthday! :)
congratulation Chris !
happy 4th, in both senses
been a big fan of your site ever since I found it, I have learned a lot from it and appreciate the effort you give out to make it the quality site that it is.
welcome aboard Sara
by the way, that old Groggers video is a lot of fun
Al
Keep up the good work! Videos are great!
It have been a great pleasure to follow your site with high quality content. I never miss your article.
Thanks.
Feliz Cumpleaños CSS-Tricks!
And Muchas Gracias Chris for all the high quality work that you kindly provide us with.
Also, let me know what you are settled in Palo Alto ! I work for a small web company in the area and would be very happy to get to chat over lunch one of these days.
Sending you the bet of vibes for your move and for all your endeavors :)
– Alan
“they will probably remain a bit of a small niche community of CSS folks rather than a major driving force of the site.”
I love the forums! It sure is a driving force for me!
Thanks for the great site, it’s always a great read. Keep up the fantastic work!
Congratulations Chris, I have to say that I find your site a rare beast – a web design/dev blog the produces regular bursts of genuinely insightful content.
Agree with you on the Feedburner beta – half the functionality has been removed! What’s that all about ?!?!
Happy birthday Chris! Thanks for your blog :-D
Congratulations Chris Sir…keep posting such nice things to light all the world.!
Chris, I want to thank you for all of your hard work and time put into CSS-Tricks. I’ve been coming back to this site for 2 out of the 4 years it’s been up and I’m still learning from it.
I just landed my first “real” job out of college as a Front-End Developer at a very well-respected company, and truthfully – you have my thanks for a lot of that.
I’ve spent many hours being guided by your screencasts, WordPress books, and articles in order to teach myself CSS or other random web-practices.
I truly doubt I would be where I am at in my career if it weren’t for you.
Thanks for everything!
Kalee Eversole
Congrats! I just wanted to say I do not like surveymonkey and I find surveygizmo to be much better. Maybe you can help out with that.
Happy 4th Chris! And as a resident of Phoenix, welcome to the West :)
Happy birthday chris :D and happy years more and more for you and your great site cc-tricks , keep going man