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title: CSS-Tricks has a new owner! | daily.dev
description: CSS-Tricks is independent again after DigitalOcean, which bought the site from founder Chris Coyier in 2022. Geoff Graham, who has worked on the site for 12...
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og:description: CSS-Tricks is independent again after DigitalOcean, which bought the site from founder Chris Coyier in 2022. Geoff Graham, who has worked on the site for 12...
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> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# CSS-Tricks has a new owner!

**[CSS-Tricks](https://daily.dev/sources/css_tricks)** · 5 min read · 25 upvotes · 3 comments

## Summary

CSS-Tricks is independent again after DigitalOcean, which bought the site from founder Chris Coyier in 2022. Geoff Graham, who has worked on the site for 12 years, now owns it and is making it his full-time job. He plans to bring back traditional ad packages, sponsorships, and the newsletter after a long hiatus. The site will publish fewer new articles, around one or two most weeks, and the guest writing form is reopening. Graham is also developing an HTML/CSS course for beginners and launched a membership program and shop to support the site.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://css-tricks.com/css-tricks-has-a-new-owner>

## Questions this post answers

### Who owns CSS-Tricks now that it's no longer part of DigitalOcean?

Geoff Graham, who worked on the site for 12 years, now independently owns CSS-Tricks and is running it as his full-time job. DigitalOcean had purchased the site in 2022 from founder Chris Coyier, who started CSS-Tricks in 2007. Graham plans to bring back traditional advertising, sponsorships, a membership program, and the newsletter to fund the site.

_Front-end developers tracking CSS-Tricks' future can follow coverage of the site on daily.dev._

### How often will CSS-Tricks publish new articles after leaving DigitalOcean?

Expect around one or two new articles most weeks rather than the previous publishing pace. The guest writing form has reopened, though there is already a backlog of articles through the rest of the year, so new submissions will need to wait before being considered.

_Readers planning to pitch or follow CSS-Tricks articles can track publishing changes like this on daily.dev._

## Community take

How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 91 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-10-27).

**TL;DR:** There's genuine goodwill toward the new independent owner and nostalgia for the site's role in many developers' careers, but strong doubt about whether a CSS education/blog business can survive given AI tools and the decline of reference-site traffic.

**Sentiment:** 35% positive · 40% mixed · 25% skeptical

**The case for**

- Many credit the site with helping launch or shape their web development careers and are rooting for its return.
- Some argue there's still a market for human-crafted, trustworthy educational content as a counterweight to AI-generated slop.
- A few note that attracting a smaller, high-value audience plus sponsors can still be a viable niche business model.

**The pushback**

- Many doubt the long-term viability of a CSS education site given how AI/LLMs have changed how developers look up answers.
- Several compare it unfavorably to Tailwind's layoffs and argue the educational-content market is shrinking fast.
- Some are critical that the post doesn't address AI at all, calling that an ominous omission.
- A commenter shared firsthand publishing experience describing how brutally hard and exhausting running an independent media site can be.
- Doubts raised about how a blog-style site can realistically generate six-figure income through ads, courses, or memberships.

**By community**

- hackernews (mixed): Supportive nostalgia and well-wishes mix heavily with skepticism about the business model surviving in an AI-driven, shrinking content market.

**Hottest debate:** Whether AI/LLMs have made hand-written CSS expertise and CSS-focused content commercially obsolete.

**Open questions**

- How exactly will the site generate enough revenue to sustain a full-time salary and team?
- What was the actual purchase price paid to DigitalOcean?
- Why did DigitalOcean deprioritize and seemingly neglect the site after acquiring it?

**Highlights**

> I didn't say "easy" either, I said "straightforward hard work." What you're doing is hard work, but it's way more straightforward than building out CSS Tricks. You're a successful marathon runner. CSS Tricks will have to run a marathon with both legs tied together. What makes your subject matter (LLMs) work is that it's a very fast moving topic, much faster moving than CSS, so people come to you for news. Plus, it's difficult to test new models effectively, so people are looking for trusted names to do meta analysis, fast. Is the new OpenAI model better than Claude? Better how? Quality of output? Evaluated how? Even comparing prices can be difficult, as different models (at different settings) can generate different numbers of tokens (and different numbers of cached tokens) for the same tasks. None of that applies to CSS Tricks. CSS fundamentally can't move that fast, as long as changes in CSS require Apple, Google, and Mozilla to all agree on standards. Hardly anybody needs to know about the latest CSS news. Mostly you only need to know about Baseline Widely Available CSS features, which are at least 30 months old by definition. And when you do learn about new CSS features, it's usually pretty obvious (either to you or to an LLM) whether those new CSS features apply to something you're working on. It's going to be very, very hard to keep CSS Tricks alive, even with a lot of hard work.
> — [dfabulich on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50251029)

> I published a magazine for a few  years. Off the top of my head: - publishing is fucking hard. Early on, you need a constant stream of dependable writers who do not value their time. Later on, you have a constant stream of writers but have to figure out who will make you hate your life the least. - good writers are flaky and they always have options. A little less than half of good pitches get published. 100% of good pitches take work. - there is a difference between good and dependable writers. Early on, you need dependable even though each one eats a lot of time. Layer on, you need good. You won’t know when to switch until your readers tell you that you suck. Then it’s too late to save your publication. - I published before generative AI was possible but at each stage of popularity, I dealt with more PR shit bags. Add in generative AI and I’m not sure my naïveté would have survived as long as it did. - at its best, publishing is a very expensive way to harm yourself. Back in the day, Jim Rose would have paid me to fuck myself up in equivalent ways. Naïveté convinces you that you’re changing the world through self flagellation, but when that’s gone you’re just beating the shit out of yourself. - my co-founder handled editorial and I handled publishing. The gap between them is so massive that we really needed double the headcount. Alas, publishing is totally fucked so our budget was so low that we needed slave labour yet couldn’t even afford the slave in the first place. Without the editorial/publication divide, I would have had a heart attack five years before I did. - there’s this thing in publishing called the trough of zero ideas. You won’t believe it’s possible in the beginning but it will hit you hard. It’s not so much there aren’t ideas; it’s that you’re tired and ideas stop feeling good… they feel like work because they are. - in publishing it’s really easy to come up with business models. Unfortunately, every single business model requires consistently exceptional content, a reality distortion field and a lot of hand holding. - all those membership plans etc will be invaded by sales or PR fucks as soon as you launch them. $25 a month makes a lot of people feel entitled to explain your dreams to you. Edit - This sounds very negative and it is… but I want to publish again.
> — [hluska on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50252916)

> I am pessimistic. I hope I am wrong.  In the age of AI, content websites are trying to find a new identity for themselves.  CSS-Tricks are great resources for the tinkerer and imagineer. What kind of products and services can be offered to this niche?  courses? ads? donation buttons? Nope. Innovation, maybe. Paywalled css tools like color palette, or smartArt type demos.  The problem is that these tools require a dedicated staff just for billing, user support, and maintenance.  Say 10% of the revenue goes towards the existing CSS tricks team. That is $20 million dollars worth of annual revenue needed. $10 per user. 2 million users. If they are lucky I expect them to get 300k users.  That makes it $60 per user. There is either going to be a layoff, a price increase, or I don't know.
> — [nashashmi on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50247252)

> I was at DO at the time, so I can at least validate exactly what you implied about it frustratingly not being a priority. There's a whole story behind that I probably can't get into, but wish I could tell. I'm glad it's back with someone who loves the craft, cares, can dedicate the time to it, and not just own it to slap a "Powered by" logo on the front page. At least there's that.
> — [vanadium on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50248919)

> I didn't expect this. While I do believe that selling to DigitalOcean was a mistake ultimately, I'm concerned about the long time viability of this move considering the current landscape of web development. Don't get me wrong, I think CSS-Tricks is a great resource and it has helped me over the years, but if I was in Geoff's shoes right now I'd be pretty scared. Look at TailwindCSS for example, they had to reduce the size of their team and ended up joining Shopify to continue surviving. It is hard out here these days. I don't want to sound too doom and gloom, so I wish Geoff the best of luck and I hope he succeeds.
> — [sikozu on hackernews · 9 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50246634)

**Source threads**

- [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50245831) · 368 points · 91 comments

## Community discussion

Top comments from developers on daily.dev.

**@diyweb** · 1 upvotes

> Fewer articles a week and reopened guest writing sounds like the right trade for a site people trust for depth. Independent sites like this tend to last when the newsletter and membership carry the revenue, so that is the part worth watching.

**@ristotoldsep** · 1 upvotes

> Love this. the web needs fewer content farms and more weird independent sites.

**@confidentcoding** · 1 upvotes

> I'm so glad that they got away from Digital Ocean. It was clear they were ruining it.

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---

Tags: [#css](https://daily.dev/tags/css), [#digitalocean](https://daily.dev/tags/digitalocean)

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