CSS-Tricks is independent again as founder Chris Coyier retakes ownership from DigitalOcean

CSS-Tricks returns to independent ownership

Chris Coyier has taken CSS-Tricks back into independent ownership, four years after selling the site to DigitalOcean in 2022. According to an announcement on CSS-Tricks that surfaced on the Hacker News front page, Coyier founded the site in 2007 and ran it until the DigitalOcean acquisition. He now owns it again, describes the move as a significant personal investment, and is making the site his full-time job, at least for now. A small team will handle day-to-day management alongside him.

What changes for readers

Publishing continues, though at a gentler pace than readers may be used to: Coyier expects roughly one or two new articles per week while things get moving. The guest writing form is open again, but a backlog of pieces already scheduled through the rest of the year means new submissions will wait a while. He says he will read everything that comes in, apart from low-effort automated submissions, and follow up where he can.

The newsletter is also returning after a break Coyier admits lasted far too long.

Despite funding the site himself, Coyier does not intend to become its main byline. He frames his job as that of a publisher: editing drafts, working on the site, arranging sponsorships and, above all, helping other writers develop their own voices and giving them room to use them, rather than turning CSS-Tricks into a personal platform.

How the site will pay for itself

Advertising is central to the plan. The site will return to selling the kind of packages it offered before the DigitalOcean years, including display ads, sponsored posts and newsletter sponsorships. Coyier is candid, though, that advertising revenue alone will not cover the site's costs.

Other revenue streams are already in motion. There is a membership program that includes a private Discord community and other perks, a shop, and, in the near future, a paid course.

A turn toward beginners

That course, an HTML and CSS offering aimed at beginners, is one of the first things Coyier plans to ship. His argument is that front-end course offerings have broadly declined just as the field faces a growing skills gap, which makes teaching the fundamentals more important than ever. He also wants CSS-Tricks to welcome people at every stage of their front-end learning journey, a shift for a site that has traditionally served readers who already know what they are doing.

Why it matters

CSS-Tricks has been a fixture of front-end development for nearly two decades, and its founder taking it back is an unusual reversal of the familiar arc in which independent publications are absorbed by larger companies. It is also a live experiment in whether independent technical publishing can still fund itself through a mix of ads, memberships, commerce and education rather than corporate ownership. Coyier is explicit that publishers need reader attention more than ever at a time when AI-driven content consumption is squeezing traffic, and he asks for non-financial support too: subscribing to the newsletter, sharing articles, clicking through from RSS readers and checking out sponsors. If the model works, it offers a template that other independent outlets could copy. If it does not, one of the web's longest-running educational resources will be searching for its next owner.