Taking Back CSS-Tricks

Cooler heads than mine are better left to tell the whole story of Digital Ocean’s “stewardship” of CSS-Tricks, particularly in recent months. The short version is that communication with the team uncerimoniously stopped, publishing was halted, and overdue invoices went unpaid, all of which happened shortly after announcing that they would be leaving modern social media platforms for Elon Musk’s X and right around the same time they withdrew their pittance sponsorships of public-good projects like GNOME and FlatHub, ended their policy of offering free hosting to Open Source projects, and contributed three million dollars to a high-profile racist’s AI-branded Arch Linux configuration. These are clear statements of their values as an organization, and not ones intended for us. These are the kinds of actions taken by a company whose leadership wants to signal fealty to those they see as eventually holding power over the industry — these are the kinds of decisions made by a leadership that sees themselves as skatingkissing to where the puckring is going, as has failed countless dead-eyed would-be opportunists before them. I wish them the same luck.

This post isn’t about them, though. This post is about us. By the time you’re reading this, Geoff Graham — the person that has been single-handedly keeping the site afloat despite Digital Ocean’s neglect and mismanagement — will have the keys to the website in-hand and have just finished changing all the locks. CSS-Tricks is coming back as an independent publication — a resource only accountable to the community of designers and developers that contribute to it and work to sustain it.

This is — mark it down — a win. I know I needed one, with ever-increasing desperation. CSS-Tricks falling into such immediate and seemingly-deliberate disrepair couldn’t have come at a worse time for our industry. We are exhausted; we are despairing. The physical, mental, and emotional well-being of the people that build the web is being sacrificed in an increasingly vain effort to summon the specific version of Roko’s basilisk that means those in power can finally stop paying all those uppity tech workers that sometimes say “no” to their bad ideas. I’ve never seen it this bad, and I’ve been doing this for a long time — since the era of jQuery ascendant, of “sliding doors” tabs with cutting-edge rounded corners, since Notepad.exe and the dream of a platform where, by sharing what we’ve learned with each other, anyone can learn anything. To see what we’ve all spent so much time and effort building together deliberately steered toward a platform where no one “has to” learn anything has been excruciating. The people who seek to control this industry want to put a subscription service between you and your fundamental ability to do the work that you do — to reduce your value to that of a replaceable slot machine operator, while at the same time renting you the knowledge that might allow you to claw back some of that value. I tell you, it’s a struggle to open the laptop some days; I can only just barely wring out the brain chemicals for it.

For some, settling into a role as a proxy for programmatically-generated mediocrity might be plenty, but I’m not talking to them. For many, many more of you, I know that isn’t enough — I’m talking to you. I know because you’re like me. You’re tired, you’re angry, you’re mourning; your mind keeps drifting to thoughts of emergency exits and life rafts, and it gives you the same dull ache in your chest. You’ve always been as frustrated by the day-to-day work as anyone, but somewhere deep down, you believe in it. You find a clever solution, you fix a thorny issue, you suddenly have a new concept or syntax click into place for you, and you feel something. You believe in this — all this — despite the industry; deep down, you can still see the web’s potential as a democratizing force, designed for and built by everyone, vast and messy and chaotic as it is. You value your role in moving the needle toward that ideal, even if only ever-so-slightly. You should value it. You’re needed.

I don’t know what my role will be in the future any more than the rest of us do, but I know what it is today — what it has to be, for all of it to have ever meant anything: I am here to support every one of you that felt your jaw tighten just a little as you read the previous paragraph. I know you’re out there, because I’ve met you — exhausted, angry, still opening your laptop, despite everything, because you want more than this for yourself and for the web. I’m here to help you lift. So, I’m joining the team at CSS-Tricks.

We haven’t worked out all the details of what that looks like, but we’ve got ideas, and they’re all framed around the one thing I know for absolutely certain: I will be there — flag planted, feet set — to help anyone possessed of the curiosity and drive that the web was built on to better understand their medium and their trade, and learn how to contribute their voice and perspectives to it. We need you here, and so help me, I will help you to get here and stay here — to build new skills, to push back against efforts to make you replaceable, to weather uncertain times by building for yourself something that will always have value — no matter the job, no matter the subject, no matter the tools you use: knowledge. The web is still a place where anyone can learn anything, as long as we keep on sharing what we’ve learned with each other. I intend to keep it that way.

Now that CSS-Tricks is once again owned by the community, well, we’re likely going to need a little help from said community. The official announcement has some suggestions for ways you can get involved, and you should stay tuned for more. For the time being, here’s how you can help: first, spread the word that CSS-Tricks is coming back.

Then, take a moment to sit with the win. We all needed one. I know I did.

Hey, if you tolerated this writing, you'll really tolerate JavaScript for Everyone — a course for anyone looking to dig deep into JavaScript’s most arcane inner workings.

There are a bunch of free lessons in there, including the entire module on asynchronous JavaScript.