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DigitalOcean acquires CSS-tricks

css-tricks.com

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Re: DigitalOcean acquires CSS-tricks

#31

Post by 5350-uiop-1130 »

skilled wrote: post #15

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[…

[flagged]

Re: DigitalOcean acquires CSS-tricks

#32

Post by mxuribe »

gotts wrote: post #7

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?

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.

Re: DigitalOcean acquires CSS-tricks

#33

Post by [deleted] »

electric_muse wrote: post #22
gotts wrote: post #7

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?

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 expens…

[deleted]

Re: DigitalOcean acquires CSS-tricks

#34

Post by skilled »

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #31
skilled wrote: post #15

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[…

[flagged]

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.

Re: DigitalOcean acquires CSS-tricks

#35

Post by hanselot »

electric_muse wrote: post #22
gotts wrote: post #7

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?

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 expens…

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.

Re: DigitalOcean acquires CSS-tricks

#36

Post by petercooper »

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.

Re: DigitalOcean acquires CSS-tricks

#37

Post by jostylr »

helipad wrote: post #19

All frontend developers: keep the Flexbox article alive please.

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/

Re: DigitalOcean acquires CSS-tricks

#39

Post by acomjean »

electric_muse wrote: post #22
gotts wrote: post #7

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?

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 expens…

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..)

Re: DigitalOcean acquires CSS-tricks

#40

Post by tannhaeuser »

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.
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