Behind the Scenes of Nettuts with Collis!
… Nine months after launching Psdtuts+, it was time to expand out the clearly successful formula to other types of tutorials. Beginning with web development and Nettuts+, we launched over the course of two years a total of seven more sites. Each one applies the same overall editorial concept into a different niche, with a different editor and different writers.
The plus side of this is that the Tuts+ franchise as a whole has now grown far beyond just Photoshop tutorials. The down side is that whenever our revenue looked like it was going to pass costs, we would launch a new site driving our costs up again.
To manage a suite of blogs also introduces an additional layer of complexity as you now need a business capable of:
- Managing a team of editors each with a team of writers
- Hiring, training and occasionally replacing editors
- Handling hundreds of invoices from writers and freelance staff every month
- Managing servers, installations and themes
These requirements meant we brought on first a Tuts+ manager by the name of Skellie, who was a former editor of FreelanceSwitch. Then secondly, we hired a WordPress developer named Derek Herman who took over building and managing the themes on all the blogs. Thirdly we hired a freelance and later a full-time PHP developer to manage the servers, optimize performance and handle emergencies.
Because Tuts+ is run as part of a larger startup, we have had the benefit of piggy-backing accounting, management and legal costs from our parent business Envato. For an independent blog business however these are significant costs not to be discounted.
Quick Tip: 4 Ways to Auto-Refresh your Browser when Designing new Sites
“You know the drill: make some edits to your document, click save, switch over to your browser, refresh it, and then observe the changes. Wouldn’t it be convenient if there was to auto-refresh your browser at a provided interval? That way, for instance, every three seconds, the browser will automatically refresh. Granted, this isn’t too practical for heavy websites, however, when you’re first beginning the design of a new website, it’s quite convenient! I’ll show you a couple of ways of achieving this.”
Build an Incredible HTML5 App: $7000 Competition
Can you write HTML5 code? Don’t miss out on these prizes in Nettut+’s latest competition!
“As HTML5′s popularity continues to increase, we at Tuts+ and CodeCanyon would like to do our part in promoting and rewarding those who are on the cutting edge of what’s possible with HTML5, local storage, geolocation, SVG, and CSS3. Not only that, but we’re also, at the conclusion of this competition, launching a brand new category on our coding marketplace, CodeCanyon, specifically for HTML5 apps.”
The rules are quite simple. Using HTML5 technologies (and feel free to throw in some CSS3 goodness while you’re at it), we want you to build a cutting edge app.
Most Importantly: We want you to build an item that people will actually use. Particle effects are great, but unless you have an argument for why others would have a need for your particle item in their project, it most likely won’t be in the running for the grand prize spot. Think wide-spread, when building your app. A presentation app is wide-spread, video players are wide-spread. Use your imagination!
The prizes are amazing!
Grand Prize Winner
- $600 cold hard cash (paid via Paypal)
- 1 Copy of Camtasia Studio ($299 value; PC or Mac) (TechSmith awesomeness package)
- 1 Copy of Snag-it or Jing Pro ($50 value) (TechSmith awesomeness package)
- 1 iPod Touch ($200 value) (TechSmith awesomeness package)
- 1 Audio-Technica ATAT2020 USB Condenser Microphone ($249 value) (TechSmith awesomeness package)
- 1 Dedicated Virtual Box (Rage) from Media Temple (worth $1200)
- 1 LIFE-TIME Bona Fide subscription to Wufoo ($360 value per year)
- 1 Formstack Professional Plan ($360 value)
- $100 marketplace credit (available at all Envato marketplaces)
- 1 free copy of the up-coming Envato Birthday Bundle (files valued at $400)!
- $25 Amazon Gift card
- 1 Campaign Monitor account (5,000 email credits)
- 1 Year Pagelime Pro Account ($240 value)
- 1 Professional License of FusionCharts ($499 value)
- 1 copy of Snippets for Mac ($40 value)
- 1 2 Month Tuts+ Premium subscription ($108 value)
- 1 copy of “HTML 5: Up and Running” ($30 value)
- 1 year of Miva Merchant SAAS hosting + license
- 1 free pass to Miva Merchant developer conference in San Diego (January 2011)
- 1 copy of “JavaScript for Web Developers,” from Wrox (hardcopy $40 value)
- 1 year Typekit Personal Subscription ($25 value)
- 1 copy of Querious for Mac ($29 value)
- 1 year Ember Pro Subscription ($25 value)
- 1 single-usage license of WP Structure Theme, by contempoinc – ($35 value)
- 1 Notable Basic Subscription - 3 months ($75 value)
- 1 Rockable Press book of your choice (ebook) ($20 value)
- 1 copy of jQuery Enlightenment (ebook) ( $15 value)
- 1 Featured Item spot on the home page of CodeCanyon (exposure)
- 1 Featured Author spot on the home page of CodeCanyon (exposure)
- Item will be featured in a collection on the home page of CodeCanyon
- The coveted marketplace “Won a Competition” badge.
2 Runners-Up Prizes
- $100 marketplace credit (available at all Envato marketplaces)
- 1 Professional License of FusionCharts ($499 value)
- 1 free pass to Miva Merchant developer conference in San Diego (January 2011)
- 1 copy of Snippets for Mac ($40 value)
- 1 free copy of the up-coming Envato Birthday Bundle (files valued at $400)!
- 1 2 Month Tuts+ Premium subscription ($108 value)
- Item will be featured in a collection on the home page of CodeCanyon
- The coveted marketplace “Won a Competition” badge.
To find out more, click the title above.
Quick Tip: Improve Site Performance in 3 Easy Steps
“We all know we should do it, but how many of us do? I’m talking about minifying JavaScript, CSS, and optimizing images to reduce load times. Today, I’ll show you three quick and easy methods that all of us should implement to improve our site’s performance.”
19 Important Features to Look for in a Web Host
“If you’re reading this, you probably develop websites. We don’t make websites to let them sit on our own computers: we set them free on the web. While it’s often more fun to create the website than to worry about hosting it, web hosting isn’t a decision you should make quickly. In this roundup, I’ll point out 19 things you should look for when choosing your web host.”
How to Create Blog Excerpts with PHP
“Ever visited a blog, and noticed that each posting’s overview only contained a hundred characters or so, which is then followed by “…”? Ever wondered how to do that yourself? It’s not quite as easy as you might think. What if character number 100 occurs in the middle of a word? Do you want to display half of a word on the page? Of course not. In this video tutorial, I’ll show you how to compensate for this, as well as a host of other neat little things, like working with MySQL’s LEFT() function, using PHP’s strrpos, and substr, creating the beginning’s of an actual blog, and more.”
20+ Required Windows Apps: Web Designer’s Choice
“In April, Jeffrey Way provided us with a list of the “20 Mac Apps You’ll Use Every Day.” Not one to be biased, if you prefer Windows, this article rounds up the best programs available for boosting your productivity as a web designer.”
Creating Custom Fields for Attachments in Wordpress
“Custom fields in WordPress make it easy to customize your theme in a variety of ways; plus, they are simple to implement for posts and pages. Attachments, on the other hand, take a bit more work to implement, requiring you to read through and decipher core source code in order to make them work. We’ll be walking through the use of a couple undocumented WordPress hooks in this tutorial to make this process much easier.”
Deciphering Magic Methods in PHP
“PHP provides a number of ‘magic’ methods that allow you to do some pretty neat tricks in object oriented programming. These methods, identified by a two underscore prefix (__), function as interceptors that are automatically called when certain conditions are met. Magic methods provide some extremely useful functionality, and this tutorial will demonstrate each method’s use.”
Web Dev Q&A #2 – PHP Sessions, HTML5 Doctypes, and Form Styling
“We’re back with the second entry in the Nettuts+ Q&A series. Today, we discuss the difference between LESS and Sass, how to pass server-side values to your JavaScript, how to work with PHP and cookies, and the HTML5 doctype. Here we go!”
