RIP CSS-Tricks (we finally know what happened)

Huge respect to Chris Coyer for sharing the details of the Digital Ocean mess of a takeover. Genuinely sad to see how things have gone, I know he tried to make things work out.
LINK chriscoyier.net/2024/02/28/wh...
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S/O Ph4se0n3 for the awesome edit 🙏

[@homesynthesis]

Minecraft into software engineering is the truest combo I know of

[@syakhiskk]

I'm also the living proof of it

[@voikalternos]

true minecraft got me into so many things

[@unflexian]

Direwolf20 pack -> Bachelor's in physics

[@homesynthesis]

@@unflexian HUGE for me it was infinity evolved -> bachelor's in chemical engineering (now i do software engineering but still)

[@treyshaffer]

wow this was the exact thing i did too, started with writing Minecraft mods ended with being a wage slave at a big tech company 🤡

[@Gornius]

2:00 - A fellow "Minecraft got me into development" here too. I hosted my server on Windows, but then Windows decided to auto-update corrupting my World, and I was so fed up I decided to learn Linux. Linux led me to learning programming properly, and now here I am. Never underestimate the power of Minecraft as source of new developers. :)

[@kizigamer6895]

ya me started also last year learning programming with minecraft as me started my first program as changing minecraft datapacks then scripts to add new things and then doing java for mincraft modding and then learning python in school this year and now my interest has fully shifted into programming and learning frontend web developement

[@LeahLundqvist]

haha same! i was already tinkering a bit with python, but minecraft really got me to dive into learning development by making mods, plugins, and learning how to host things on linux

[@LeahLundqvist]

oh and of course, digitalocean played a huge part in this :p shame to see them fall from grace like this

[@creeperkafasi]

Similar situation here. Although it didn't make me start programming, it really pushed me towards learning new stuff thanks to the modding and technical communities.

[@xelspeth]

Started learning to code to develop spigot plugins so not far off here either

[@neozes]

Flex box and grid. Its the only resource I fall back to when I need to recall a piece of information about these two. What a sentimental trip. I hope css-tricks stays as a tribute one the internet, if cant be maintained.

[@vpetryniak]

Just do not sell your channel to Primegean PLEASE 🙏

[@Kane0123]

The name… is Theo isn’t here anymore get used to it… agen.

[@Kestrel-lp8ho]

React by the way

[@blazehawkins2759]

Do it!

[@hacktor_92]

please do. i'm awaiting for more rust x typescript content. maybe an embeddable nodejs project written in rust without v8?!?! who knwos? /jk

[@creativecraving]

😂 That would be a great April Fool's joke. Primeo would be up for it!

[@andreasnulein782]

Neil, the author of the last post on css-tricks has this in his profile: "I'm sorry Chris - I never wanted my passkeys post to signify the end of an era :("

[@MaurizioPireddu]

Appreciate the openness of Chris on this. Also, his message to the VP of Content & Community is a masterpiece. So well written!

[@Vincent-tz4jl]

Stumbling on css-tricks as a new dev was like finding the holy grail of content in a wasteland of bullshit. Sad to see it go like this.

[@Fupicat]

Chris Coyier still writes for the weekly Codepen newsletter! He's always sharing interesting pens, CSS tricks, news, advice and opinions there and, while it's not as useful a resource since it's by email, it's still fun if you're an enthusiast.

[@4.0.4]

Ahh email newsletters, the way to memoryhole content/resources before Discord was invented.

[@zbianca]

He often writes for the FrontendMasters blog.

[@trimonmusic]

I had no idea until today that he was behind both. Like many, we just come for the guides and leave without paying attention to the person behind it. But what I will say is that the flexbox guide helped me fall in love with web development, and began a career I held for a number of years. The only web development newsletter I subscribe to, because I get actual value from it, is the CodePen newsletter. No wonder, they're by the same person. If DigitalOcean have any sense, they'll make this right, but I'm not expecting that to be the case.

[@flyguy8791]

I also learned everything I know about Flexbox from CSS-Tricks (and still reference it if needed). Honestly just a sucky, sad story. Big thanks to Chris for trying to save it, bummer that it didn't work out. Even with that masterpiece of a letter, quite an excellent writer that man. Thanks for covering the story Theo! In other news, apparently I'm looking for a new web host..

[@Matt23488]

Well, it looks like the site is well-preserved on the wayback machine, so if anything does happen, there's always that.

[@thebard20]

I work at a company that neglected one of its own products in a similar way and it's so much harder to bring something back from the depths than it is to create the first time

[@jameslawrence8734]

Spoken like someone who has only resurrected the projects of others having created nothing of their own.

[@armaandhanji7151]

Legit almost shed a tear when you mentioned selling the channel. The dev world is a much better place thanks to the knowledge you share and the community you've created here is something really special!

[@TheHadrian54]

I didn't even know it was bought by Digital Ocean, I just assumed they ran out of new tricks lol.

[@GrygrFlzr]

There's so much you can do now with :has selectors that it would be pretty surprising to run out of tricks.

[@paulie-g]

@@GrygrFlzrThat's one article on ':has cheeseburger', no need to overstate

[@JacobGorny]

A List Apart and then CSS-Tricks were my go-to for years and really brought me into UI work. Glad it is still up even if it is a zombie.

[@4.0.4]

Yep, do you remember how it was? Anything you looked up turned w3school, a crap resource; then you had those two you mention; treasure troves.

[@k40L1n]

Bro, I recently went to CSS-tricks and was really sad to see, no latest updates, no discussions. I didn't know he sold it off to DO. The human touch of that website and the insights are always unparelled. This was one site, that didn't have to go down like that.

[@DD-ds7ui]

If it wasn't for digital ocean , I could have failed full-stack exam at my uni. they had excellent articles on creating CI/CD pipelines and going live.

[@ar_xiv]

Who remembers CSS Zen Garden? That and AListApart got me into webdev. I miss that era

[@szmr]

CSS Tricks was a great place to go, I used it so much during college. Such a shame but I don’t blame Chris. No one has a crystal ball

[@ronilbiswas]

I also learned flexbox(especially) from CSS-Tricks. It's a shame what happened with this fabulous css knowledgebase.

[@nikola.yanchev]

Didn't expect that from DO, their tutorials and documentation is one of the best i have come across

[@4.0.4]

I had heard of digital ocean, it was an option before I picked another one. Now, I'll forever remember them as the guys who ruined CSS-Tricks.

[@CaioCodes]

This website helped me so much, it was a tutor for me.

[@MMuraseofSandvich]

I think I remember browsing CSS Tricks _before_ flexbox was a thing. I may have ended up moving on as web design wasn't my job, but I remember thinking "This guy really knows what he's doing, unlike me." I don't know if I have ever seen anything like this sold to a public corporation and _improved_ over the long term. What usually happens is that after the acquisition the new owners manage to get things running for a while, then management or other priorities change and they try to shove that acquisition into a box that doesn't fit, stuff fails, heads roll, and the project enters a state where if the owner is Google, they would shut it down even though they have all the resources in the world to keep it going and even if the project is incredibly popular. It would not surprise me if some new manager at DO screwed the pooch so badly, that even if they sold it back to Chris at the original purchase price, they would be losing a sizeable chunk of money. And if they lose money on this, guess what-- the guy who is in charge gets canned. That's why the guy who actually reached out to Chris didn't respond to the big swing, he doesn't want to put his own neck on the line.

[@kladdelic]

So good to find some clarity about what happened. Chris is really great, and I used to frequent css-tricks daily since 2013 when it was up and running. Got my first dip into Tailwind CSS there. Seems so fishy how DO is handling the situation. At least the site is still up, so there is some hope left. Thanks for reporting on that, Theo. :3

[@paulie-g]

Nothing fishy, they're just a) not a content company and b) not deriving enough ROI/benefit from the content. This makes sense. Their backend docs have some sort of connection to their services - someone could plausibly read them and decide to use DO (if they can't count well, anyway). Frontend has nothing to do with their services and frontend devs don't get to decide on hosting unless it's for personal projects and then they go with static/CDN hosts for SPAs so they don't have to write backend.

[@jaygarricktheflash]

LOL!!! I used that flexbox page forever!!! Great throwback!!

[@charliesta.abc123]

Digital ocean taught me so much. I learned how to configure servers, deployments, nginx etc from their articles. I appreciate them

[@socialkruption]

Link his shoptalk podcast as well! It's a great listen! I met Chris 14 years ago, great guy.

[@jonreznick5531]

I didn't know this dark lore about CSS-tricks. Digital Ocean documentation (like yours in re Minecraft) got me setting up a lot of my current stack as well...

[@ofmouseandman1316]

CSS Tricks is still my goto for flexbox, html entities and grid... however the more it hangs, the more it become obsolete and the less and less It is my ressource and I rely more and more on Kevin Powell

[@thijsz]

Ah, so that’s the reason I never end up on ccs-tricks anymore 😂

[@nmimagine]

I have that css-tricks' complete guide to flexbox open right now

[@sharishth]

I was able to learn flex and grids through css tricks. I caught on quickly just after single reading. Really conceptual and easy to learn.

[@HitchHitchHitch]

Well, it's official. I just read an entire blog post through pausing and skipping a KZbin video EXACTLY how css-tricks would have intended 😅

[@niknaksim]

I didnt notice that it hadnt been updated until I saw Chris's post 😅.

[@julianjackson8756]

huge respect to Chris, css-tricks and his podcast alongside Dave, helped me change my career.

[@cotneit]

Man, I still have no idea what I was doing wrong when opening/forwarding ports on my router back in the day...

[@LongJourneys]

I started using CSS Tricks back in like 2010, and it was the go-to for a long time. Sad what happened to it.

[@realbigsquid]

I learned so much from Chris back in the day. That's so crazy. This is the first I've heard of digital Ocean, and if I have to pick one or the other it's not gonna be them lol

[@erics2133]

I managed to miss knowing about the sale. I knew that CSS-Tricks content had died off and was sad over that, but now I know why, and I'm even sadder over it.

[@berridgeab]

I've got that flexbox poster laminated on my desk.

[@erich_ika]

Yup, first time hearing about DigitalOcean! is it like Netlify?

[@ManChicken]

It's a hellhole of spammers

[@RevAssassin]

There was a time when I checked CSS Tricks every single day. I learned so much there, to the point I even considered becoming some kind of "CSS wizard" to stand out in the front-end Job market (didn't work tho). It was just the other day that I noticed it had been a while since the last time I had checked it and went to see what's new and I was baffled that the answer was NOTHING. Since 2022!

[@johnbull-dev]

Some things are better left alone. We can look back and remember what was good and learn some lessons on what not to do.

[@vikingthedude]

Lets hope they don’t take it down

[@kizigamer6895]

@@vikingthedude me thinking why cant we preserve the content atleast the idea of recreating the site from scratch in astro would be very nice project that me willing to do but why cant they do it?

[@coffeemakir1977]

Wow i missed this whole thing. I have the flexbox & grid hung on my wall😢

[@lit_ua]

hey Theo! Thanks for this video. Please do smth about Wordpress. Maybe smth like state of WP in 2024 and how headless CMS like Prismic / Hygraph / Contenful and others compete

[@danny3man]

My question is : How can one download a complete website ?

[@AsgerJon]

how to center a div?

[@baka_baca]

Dang, yeah CSS Tricks has gotten me out of plenty of sticky situations at work because of how great of a resource it is. At a much smaller scale I've seen great work I've done get thrown away and replaced with just straight garbage and it totally sucks. I can't imagine how it must actually feel to see something as vast and awesome as CSS Tricks end up like this for Chris.

[@nicholas6497]

I used the DigitalOcean Minecraft server tutorials as well! It taught me the very basics of Linux. I always liked their services personally. Shame to hear what they've done to CSS-Tricks.

[@JuicyBenji]

I also had a mind bogglingly bad experience with digital ocean about a year ago. So now you’re just giving me even more reason to never use them again 😂

[@simondann7371]

Didnt Digital Ocean do the same thing to scotch io?

[@SamK329]

I'm fairly new to web dev (but been programming in various forms for about 15 years) and had never heard of digital ocean (nor css-tricks) before today, so definitely giving me just the negative sentiment css-tricks is very cool and useful though!

[@FunDumb]

I love css-tricks, and codepen! Phenomenal

[@007KrausBean]

CSS-Tricks is where I learned CSS. The best way to present things and have it all make sense. Chris is amazing for putting that into the world when he did and I'm glad I got to use it as much as I did. That is really horrible what DO did to it. Shameful, really.

[@timseguine2]

css tricks was the only reason I survived on front end back in the day.

[@veryfewfriends]

I like Theo & Prime, but I don't know how I feel about videos that mostly just...read an entire blogpost or watch an entire video & comment little on it. I wasn't timekeeping religiously but, the comments/preamble felt like 20-30% of the video. For a video that eliminates most of the need to read the origin site, I would've expected more meat to this. Anyway, maybe I'm just wrong and this stuff's more common now/just helps more.

[@sofia.eris.bauhaus]

would be nice to link the blog post in the description. maybe you forgot…

[@t3dotgg]

Missed it my bad!

[@sofia.eris.bauhaus]

@@t3dotgg no biggie, thanks for fixing it 😃!

[@kishirisu1268]

Never opened that site..

[@PitaPaaaka]

Sad story

[@bs701]

Love Chris, what a wholesome dude.

[@briankgarland]

I was wondering what happened to it.

[@de-ep]

damn... CSS tricks is the only place who helped me in understanding flex stuffs... also how to change the color of the scrollbar

[@kklowd]

I used to be a big fan of digital ocean and will never use digital ocean again

[@marcpanther8515]

11:11 why show the middle finger, lol?

[@t3dotgg]

It was a peace sign lol, didn't think of the mic placement

[@marcpanther8515]

@@t3dotgghehe

[@tsxpneo]

Wld love to hear about modern WordPress from you. A lot is happening in WP, including the interactivity API.

[@ifyugwumba8120]

Please what browser do you use man

[@RoyRope]

Oof the times I visited the flexbox page, not countable.

[@tyapka]

Oh man that flex page I alone opened it probably a hundred times.

[@melimsah]

Not even a dev, but I think this showed up in my algorithm feed (all hail its infinite wisdom lest it smite us in our sleep) because I look up coding for after effects and I tend to consume content about techy things imploding (crypto scams, game dev layoffs, youtuber scandals, etc). This is so nuts and I can think of websites in my own sphere that I'd freak if they suddenly stopped doing what they do. Here's hoping at least the archive remains for a good long while, until something better comes along to replace it.

[@user-gc3dh9jf5i]

Flexbox cheatsheet tattoo. YES

[@kingkool68]

7:28 YES! Make more WordPress content

[@rmschindler144]

I can’t help but feel hopeful about this . who will fill the vacuum?, I wonder

[@henrymaddocks984]

Digital Ocean's docs were the gold standard for so much stuff. I always used to go to their ssh docs. Screw those guys.

[@filipivanovic7083]

you dont have to sell it just have the openai's video thingy act silly on camera

[@knightlautrec4311]

Has an acquisition *ever* been an overall good thing? Especially for an already good thing? I can't recall any situation where a previously good thing was *improved* by some big company buying it.

[@Tekay37]

I think this video really is the first time I heard about digitalOcean.

[@TheTmLev]

I'd say you're an outlier

[@t3dotgg]

This is making me feel old

[@cornheadahh]

My professor made us use them for hosting in my university class

[@Tekay37]

@@t3dotgg I'm 10 years older than you.

[@adamalexander5634]

DO CEO commented on CC’s blog post. A happy ending/new beginning perhaps… ?

[@TuxieBSOD]

I can respect his whole "It's mostly internal politics in a large company" over something *that close to him*. That takes some serious management of emotions. Kudos.

[@lonnieezell]

Seems like it had an effect. There's been a few new posts in the last 3 weeks. We'll see if it continues.

[@deatho0ne587]

Did not even know it was sold to DO, just thought it had died due to maybe Chris got busy in other things. Yes, flex and grid I mostly understand due to css-tricks but there were several other things.

[@ayoCC]

Well technically he did get too busy

[@deatho0ne587]

Yes, but more meaning he just stop updating and did not sale it.

[@oliverp3464]

Download poster before they turn off the site.

[@RandomGeometryDashStuff]

00:16 not mdn?

[@madeinhvn]

Where is your floral bright colored shirt??

[@elgalas]

What browser is he using?

[@BergkampHUN]

This would have been my question also :D

[@elgalas]

@@BergkampHUN it is Arc, a privacy focused browser that requires your email and other personal data to get started.

[@BergkampHUN]

I think it's the "Arc"

[@elgalas]

@@BergkampHUN yeah I had answered, that it is Arc, a privacy browser that requires personal data to get started

[@badumtsy]

It's alive once again

[@InternetKilledTV21]

At least things will stay semi-immortalized on web archive :)

[@deado7282]

I was like: CSS Tricks? Dont even know what that is. Then: Oh it's that flexbox&grid website. Yeah... every web-dev was there at some point.

[@Ben-eu8dz]

Digital ocean used to be my go to vm host. Never again.

[@welling1]

I use to be on this site every single day, reading everything.

[@andreasnulein782]

same @ learning flex from css tricks

[@PaulSebastianM]

The future is small companies that hyper specialize and value not just their products, but also their employees.

[@paulie-g]

... and the people falling over themselves to pay for that are.. where?

[@docmars]

DigitalOcean should just sell digital copies of CSS Tricks as a digital interactive book that you can self-host or use in e-Book / PDF formats. People would totally pay for that if they decided to take it down. I'd pay for that!

[@Jolfgard]

That's how takeovers in tech work. You buy it, then you can it. That way, people still are in need of your original solution for lack of better alternatives.

[@PaperAirplaneFactory]

More Wordpress content!

[@Exilum]

I literally got into development because I wanted to make a Minecraft mod back around 2013-2014 or something like that. Weirdly enough, starting with Java might be part of why I dislike Java so much. I started Java with a very positive opinion, thinking it was good and fun, so it could only go downhill from there. There's something profoundly unsettling about how verbose Java is.

[@paulie-g]

I'm assuming you're at the end of that journey: APL?

[@Exilum]

@@paulie-g I genuinely am lost. APL?

[@paulie-g]

@@ExilumIf your main requirement for a language is conciseness, it would make sense to minmax optimise for that. I suggested APL. Look it up. It's glorious. Also pays 4-5x Java coding salaries and covers the nice padded rooms once it fries your brain.

[@mindasb]

The lesson we have there is ... the internet is NOT forever, kids.

[@dennisyo]

Please cover some WordPress! Wonder what you have to say about it Theo. 🙂

[@IAMTHESWORDtheLAMBHASDIED]

CSS-Tricks was HEROIC

[@OffroadTreks]

I had no idea, this is sad. But it probably doesn't hurt Digital Ocean in the least. For all the hate on Heroku for killing the free tier they're still multimillion dollar company hitting revenue goals.

[@Slashx92]

About the last part of the view. I don't think selling css tricks was a mistake in any regard, but it would be interesting to think about contract clauses that specify that the buyer MUST maintain a level of "liveliness" to the product. I'm no lawyer but I'm sure that if you have a beloved product of site that you don't want to become shit thanks to the next owner, you can set that in the contract