9 ms·

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]

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-digitalocean https://www.digitalocean.com/blog/scotch-io-is-joining-digit... [1]: https://twitter.com/chris__sev https://twitter.com/chris__sev [2]: https://www.better.dev/ https://www.better.dev/

5350-uiop-1130 5y ago
[flagged]
- skilled 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 https://imgur.com/a/ashZPDa [2] - https://imgur.com/a/Wd9kzJt https://imgur.com/a/Wd9kzJt
archerx 5y ago
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"?
- DaltonCoffee 5y ago
  Horses
- nlarew 5y ago
  "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_ 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      's short for "is the list of"
      - gtirloni 5y ago
        I'd love to read more about that. Is that a new idiom?
        emsixteen 5y ago
        there's a lot there are a lot
        hunter2_ 5y ago
        There's no way "there's a lot" is a contraction of "there is a list of a lot" which is what you're implying based on the way this particular thread has evolved. Also, your example is ambiguous because "lot" is a singular noun (you wouldn't use "are" if the object is a parking lot, for example) but if you're truncating a longer phrase like "a lot of widgets" then "a lot" is modifying a plural noun (you'd definitely use "are" for that, or the informal apostrophe+s we're discussing).
vohu43 5y ago
Did the quality of the content on scotch.io change? Can we expect the same thing for CSS-tricks?
- swyx 5y ago
  scotch's traffic has been in sharp decline since the acquisition https://www.similarweb.com/website/scotch.io/#overview https://www.similarweb.com/website/scotch.io/#overview i'm not really sure what they bought to be honest
- skilled 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure the content stopped in mid 2020, so a year or so after the sale. And then eventually was redirected to DigitalOcean. Also, just to add my own thought to this - CSS-Tricks is of course very loved by people who learned things there, and people who respect Chris Coyer as a designer. But, these acquisitions do have an effect on how people perceive a project, and skepticism is very high on that list. They seem to be keeping the "Write for Us" option open, with 300$+ a pop per guest post + promotion to your project. If anything, it will become a haven for those kind of posts. If not, they might by some miracle find a really good person (dev or designer) who is willing to take on the reigns for a while. Unlikely, though.
the_common_man 5y ago
Do you know the numbers? Is that what you meant by big sale?

5350-uiop-1130 5y ago

[flagged]

skilled 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 https://imgur.com/a/ashZPDa [2] - https://imgur.com/a/Wd9kzJt https://imgur.com/a/Wd9kzJt

archerx 5y ago

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"?

DaltonCoffee 5y ago
Horses
nlarew 5y ago
"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_ 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    's short for "is the list of"
    - gtirloni 5y ago
      I'd love to read more about that. Is that a new idiom?
      - emsixteen 5y ago
        there's a lot there are a lot
        hunter2_ 5y ago
        There's no way "there's a lot" is a contraction of "there is a list of a lot" which is what you're implying based on the way this particular thread has evolved. Also, your example is ambiguous because "lot" is a singular noun (you wouldn't use "are" if the object is a parking lot, for example) but if you're truncating a longer phrase like "a lot of widgets" then "a lot" is modifying a plural noun (you'd definitely use "are" for that, or the informal apostrophe+s we're discussing).

vohu43 5y ago

Did the quality of the content on scotch.io change? Can we expect the same thing for CSS-tricks?

swyx 5y ago
scotch's traffic has been in sharp decline since the acquisition https://www.similarweb.com/website/scotch.io/#overview https://www.similarweb.com/website/scotch.io/#overview i'm not really sure what they bought to be honest
skilled 5y ago
I'm pretty sure the content stopped in mid 2020, so a year or so after the sale. And then eventually was redirected to DigitalOcean. Also, just to add my own thought to this - CSS-Tricks is of course very loved by people who learned things there, and people who respect Chris Coyer as a designer. But, these acquisitions do have an effect on how people perceive a project, and skepticism is very high on that list. They seem to be keeping the "Write for Us" option open, with 300$+ a pop per guest post + promotion to your project. If anything, it will become a haven for those kind of posts. If not, they might by some miracle find a really good person (dev or designer) who is willing to take on the reigns for a while. Unlikely, though.

the_common_man 5y ago

Do you know the numbers? Is that what you meant by big sale?