#I wanted to give them unique shapes but tried to sorta stay true to the mlp style as well- with a bit of a spin | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

amorremanet · 6 years

Note

For the three-sentence fics: Sheith, flower shop AU?

pairing + AU setting = “3-sentence” fic (the post)i would like to formally apologize to regris but not for my deliberate failure to understand the word, “three”

also posted on AO3 because whoops, it got long

“Here’s what I don’t get about your situation with Regris,” Shiro announces, pushing up his black-framed glasses with a sigh that wishes it were pensive.

Mostly, he sounds like someone’s trying to drag him out of bed against his will. On the plus, he doesn’t sound like he’s been moping in his room all day, while blasting his favorite angsty girl singer-songwriters, sad acoustic songs by artists Keith has never heard of outside of Shiro, and the occasional hour-long loop of “Careless Whisper.” He also doesn’t sound like it’s noon-thirty on a Saturday, he’s only gotten up to take his meds, and he doesn’t want to admit to or deal with any problems that might have a hand in why he’s napping all day.

But on the downside, his, “I know I have to go to campus today, but God, five more minutes? Stop expecting me to wake up, eat breakfast, and put on pants like an adult” whine isn’t much better. It only has a slight edge because he’s being difficult, but at least he isn’t actively disregarding himself again.

For his part, Keith shrugs without looking up from the arrangement he’s working on. It’s a special order, made up of red roses, yellow lilies, pink orchids from the Blooms of Marmora’s private hothouses out back, and pink juniberry flowers. Keith took this exercise in sculptural horticulture as a commission from Lance, something suitably unique for his, Hunk’s, and Allura’s upcoming “triad-versary.”

This project being a commission for a kinda-sorta friend is irrelevant. Keith owes it to himself and to his work to focus. Besides, Lance’s rich-ass parents don’t mind letting their youngest drop over a grand on something that’s going to wither, wilt, and die within three weeks. He promised Keith an extra tip to go with his commission fee, if Keith, “can really, truly capture the no sé qué of True Love? Like, dazzle me. Find a way to embody how Shiro looks like someone drop-kicked Red into rush-hour traffic when you used to making out with Regris, but do it with flowers. Okay, Mullet? Can you make that magic happen for me?”

Which doesn’t help, as a direction, because the fluffy, black cat-shaped diva who Keith and Shiro belong to would never allow someone to do that to her. Also, Shiro never once looked like that when Keith was still with Regris. But hey, whatever. The money’s good, and Keith knows way more than he likes about how Lance looks at his significant others. He’ll portray that in this arrangement, and everything will be copacetic.

Except for the part where Shiro apparently needs to ignore Keith’s silence, swish out his ponytail, and pipe up with: “Granted, there’s a lot about the situation with Regris that doesn’t make sense to me? You like him, he likes you—”

”And we like each other better when we aren’t dating. When we aren’t screwing around either, for that matter.”

“Keith.” Folding his arms over his chest, idly drumming his left hand’s organic fingers against the high-tech prosthetic on his right-hand side, Shiro digs the small of his back at the counter. “Come on, I’m serious.”

Taking several deep, slow breaths, Keith tries to remind himself that he loves Shiro. Ghosting his fingertips up one of the lilies’ petals, he tells himself that Shiro means well, and that Shiro deserves for his alleged best friend to listen to him when he’s trying to help out. Never mind that there’s nothing to help with, because despite the ostensible focal point of the conversation, this is more for Shiro than it is for Keith.

This works great until Keith’s mouth takes over: “I’m being serious,” he blurts out. “Just because Regris and I like each other doesn’t mean that we should be together. We weren’t working out, so we’re over like that. It’s not a big deal.”

“Six months together isn’t anything to sneeze at—”

“What, it’s not that long.” Keith huffs. “Or are the standards different because I’m a hot mess with Mommy issues, Daddy issues, abandonment issues, and whatever other shit our therapist tells you about me?”

As soon as he says it, Keith chokes down a sigh and a chilly feeling of regret. He can barely force himself look at Shiro, now. Whatever’s glimmering behind his eyes makes Keith want to bolt to the break-room and throw up. The worst part is that he hopes the look in Shiro’s eyes is hurt instead of disappointment — as if Keith needed any further confirmation that he is wrong while everyone else is right, and he’s broken, which will leave him alone in the end, whenever everybody he cares about realizes how much better they deserve and runs out.

At the absolute best, he might only be dropping uncomfortable surprises on Shiro’s head. Normally, Keith doesn’t mind Shiro hanging around the shop while he’s working. Shiro has more free time than Keith would’ve guessed came with an MFA program and holing up in the apartment is terrible for him, emotionally. Keith’s bosses and coworkers have taken a liking to Shiro and he helps out without expecting anything in return, so they don’t mind. Technically, it’s against protocol for Shiro to spend his free time writing here instead of pretending to write at a coffee-shop or a library like his classmates and the undergrads he’ll be teaching next semester.

Selfishly, Shiro steadies Keith’s nerves when customers are being assholes. He keeps Keith motivated when Kolivan’s being impossible to please, and keeps him focused when Ulaz won’t listen to anyone but Thace even though his latest big idea sounds completely asinine. He keeps Keith from going off the handle too badly when Antok’s acting like he knows Keith intimately just because his husband’s kinda taken Keith on as a floristprotege, or whenever Murphy’s Law finds some new way of crashing the party.

Most days, Keith wouldn’t even mind Shiro leaning on the counter, swishing out his ponytail, and refusing to admit that he’s feeling upset about something and desperately wants Keith to give him some extra attention. After so long with each other, Keith recognizes that behavior and understands it. He can usually deal with it fine, even when he’s up to his goddamn eyes in actualizing Lance’s pseudo-surrealist floral love letter, and placing the flowers to Lance’s annoyingly precise specifications.

Most days, however, involve Shiro chilling behind the counter with a notebook or his reading for class, not interrogating Keith about his most recent ex. Never mind the fact that Keith and Regris romantically split up almost seven weeks ago. It’s a fair enough point to Keith, but apparently, Shiro doesn’t think that it matters.

Shiro takes a deep breath of his own before he points out, “If you didn’t want to let Dr. Hall talk to me about you, then you didn’t need to waive confidentiality. You can change your mind and back out of that whenever you want.”

“Yeah, because Coran and Kolivan will really let me get away with that.” Rolling his eyes makes Keith feel petulant, but whatever. Hopefully, Shiro’s looking at the ceiling, so if Keith aims his expression at these roses, maybe Shiro won’t see anything. “It’s bad enough that they ganged up on me about how it wasn’t fair to make you see a therapist without doing anything for myself—”

“They talked to you about your well-being because they were concerned—”

“It was worse enough when they dragged the gang into a godawful bullshit interv—”

“Again?” Shiro pinches the bridge of his nose with his prosthetic fingers. He winces, possibly losing control of how much pressure he’s applying again. “They were concerned and doing what they thought they had to do to make you care about yourself—”

“They should’ve listened to you. I mean, you told them not to do the stupid intervention. You told them how I’d take it…” Keith should have something more to say about this. Something better. But he should also be able to look at Shiro, given that he’s the reason why Shiro might be deliberately squeezing too hard on his nose, and Keith can’t manage to look up from his arrangement.

He fluffs one of the orchids, so it looks like he’s doing something.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” he says. “If they heard I wasn’t letting you keep tabs on me, they’d flip out at me like I’m a five-year-old.”

“It’s not their therapy.” Shiro sighs as if it’s taking a massive amount of effort for him not to snap at Keith right now — which it probably is, considering how much of a headache Keith is, even on his best days. “The fact that they helped talk you into seeing Dr. Hall does not mean they get to have a say in what your treatment—”

Keith cringes at his flowers with an audible ugh, even though none of this is their fault. “Well, I wouldn’t feel good about doing it, okay? You waived your confidentiality with her for me. Doing the same for you is only fair.”

In all likelihood, it’d be fairer if Keith told Dr. Hall half as much as Shiro makes himself open up about in his sessions — but still. Shiro gets to ask Dr. Hall whatever he wants about Keith and vice versa. For now, Keith gets to wrinkle his nose at a clutch of juniberry flowers that refuses to match up with Lance’s sketches. He furrows his brow at one of the laminated sheets that he’s working with and tries to ignore the way that Shiro’s hugging himself in perfect silence.

“Look, for what it’s worth?” he says, when Shiro stays quiet for so long that it’s a miracle Keith doesn’t go puke. “You were right about me and Regris liking each other and clicking well. That’s why we pulled the plug. Broke things off before we started hating each other—”

“But why would it need to have ended that way with him?” Shiro protests, ever hopeful about Keith in ways that make no earthly sense. “Who says that you couldn’t have made it work in the long run and been really happy together?”

“Why do you keep asking me questions like that?” Keith can’t get his juniberry flowers to behave, so he moves on to arranging the little section of orchids and roses. “You know I never have a good answer to them. Since, ‘Because books and movies and TV lied to me, real-world relationships always end in pain if you don’t get out of them quick enough’ is a logical fallacy now or whatever?”

To his credit, Shiro doesn’t take Keith’s bait. He could do what he’s done before and point out that it’s always been a logical fallacy. Instead, he shrugs as if he’s trying so hard to stay casual that it might literally kill him.

“Maybe I keep asking because I know you’re capable of finding an answer, if you try a little harder. Maybe I think finding that answer could help you.” Tucking his long, bleached-white fringe behind his ear, Shiro says, “Also, you’ve started shutting down when anyone else in the gang makes an effort.”

“I talk to Matt and Allura very openly by my standards.”

“Your standards make dead men look perfectly forthcoming. And I understand why you do things like that, Keith, I get it, but…” Shiro heaves yet another sigh. Unfortunately, this one sounds like he’s about five seconds off from crying.

Even in profile, the wide-eyed, lip-quivering, open look on his face makes Keith amend that estimate. Shiro’s probably more like two seconds away from a crying jag. His glasses slide down his nose as he hangs his head, and Keith’s breath hitches in his throat. He curls his fingers tight around the handle of his pruning shears. Shit, there must be something he can say to make Shiro stop looking like that, to fix things so he doesn’t feel so upset and cry. Doing that exhausts him, and Shiro has class tonight, so God help him, Keith has to figure out how to keep Shiro from crying when he deserves so much better than this—

“I promise, I’m not trying to put you under a microscope,” he says, more gently than Keith deserves. “But you’ve been logging way too many hours here since you and Regris broke up—”

“I’ve been working with Lance on this anniversary piece.” Keith’s hands tremble as he lets up on the shears and adjusts the roses. “We had some pretty intense negotiations. Then, I had to fit in extra time in the greenhouses. Ulaz grew these orchids, I couldn’t use them without doing the legwork to replenish—”

“Lance only commissioned you three weeks ago, Keith.” Shiro turns to face Keith properly, slouching at the hips and looking down to meet his eyes. “You started taking all this ridiculous overtime six weeks, almost seven weeks—”

“I know when Regris and I broke up, Takashi. Unlike you, I was actually there for the conversation.”

In the face of his given name being sneered like that, Shiro arches an eyebrow and squints at Keith over his glasses. For a moment, he holds that unimpressed expression, the one like he can see right through whoever’s on the receiving end of it and there’s nothing they can hide from him. Keith’s heart stutters — he might have worked his way from disappointing Shiro to legitimately making him angry.

Given how rarely he shows it when someone’s getting to him so badly, Shiro should be ready to throw a punch. Keith’s more than earned it, by now. He’s been stubborn and difficult, short-fused with a hot temper. More than anyone else in Keith’s life, Shiro’s the one who’s gotten stuck putting up with the worst of Keith’s habits, all the signs that he isn’t worth the effort that it takes to show him any kindness.

When Shiro’s prosthetic arm twitches away from his organic one, that has to mean Keith’s got something painful coming to him. A smack, a punch — it doesn’t matter what. Shiro’s finally going to hit him now, after so many years of never doing that to Keith and seeming like maybe he never would. Pursing his lips, Keith nudges the arrangement down the counter, so it won’t block Shiro’s shot. As Shiro reaches out toward him, he knows that he deserves it. Expecting a fist, Keith flinches.

All that Shiro does is caress Keith’s shoulder. He’s so gentle about touching Keith with his prosthetic, so ginger about squeezing him that, if not for how heavy this arm is, Keith might not have noticed anything.

He should say something now, most likely? That’s probably what you’re supposed to do when someone you love, who has every right to be fed up with you and every right to take a swing besides, chooses to show you mercy instead? But as his eyes go wide, as they sting at him and his lips tremble, Keith can’t find the words. Or any words, for that matter. His throat barely manages to make a wobbly, bemused little noise.

“Keith, you’ve been miserable since you broke up with Regris.” Shiro’s lips quirk almost like he’s trying to give Keith a reassuring smile. “If you’re scared being hurt, or scared of how you feel about him? I understand that. And if you feel like you don’t deserve him? I disagree, like… I’ve told Lance and Allura so many times that he was great, but he still didn’t deserve you. But if you love Regris so much, then dumping him won’t make you feel better. You’ll just watch him with other people and hate yourself for feeling jealous—”

“That wasn’t why I broke up with him!”

Gasping at his own voice, Keith lets his eyes dart all over the shop. He glances in every corner until he’s sure that no one else is in here with them. It’s been a slow morning. No other customers, and aside from Keith, only Kolivan’s come in. He’s back in the greenhouses — right, of course there’s no one else in the shop… No one but Keith and Shiro.

Shiro, who is currently half-agog and blinking at Keith. The question he doesn’t say makes itself obvious: Why did Keith break up with Regris if he wasn’t running from his feelings and the threat of letting himself get attached to another person, the way he’s done with so many other people who’ve tried to get close to him, whether romantically or not.

Keith inhales deeply and looks down at the counter. “It didn’t feel right, okay?” he says. “Being with him when I can’t shake someone else. He deserves better than that.”

“But that’s… Keith, what are you…”

When Keith manages to look at him, Shiro has his entire face scrunched up like a bunny who’s trying to read one of Thace’s invoices. His confusion kindles something warm in Keith’s chest, makes it flare up brighter than fireworks, but — no. No, Keith can’t. Surely, Shiro would’ve done something by now, if he felt anything like Keith does. He would’ve said something. Maybe he doesn’t agree with the obvious truth that he’s too impossibly good for Keith, because Shiro insists on believing in Keith so much that it hurts sometimes. But if he felt even half of what Keith does, then he would have—

“Okay, so who can’t you get out of your system?” Shiro tries to beam at Keith, but his tight, wobbly smile is so obviously fake that Keith wants to scream. All it does is make Shiro look like part of him is dying.

Why do you even need to ask that question? — the thought burns Keith’s throat but he doesn’t let himself say anything.

Squeezing Keith’s shoulder again, Shiro forces a chuckle. If it weren’t so clearly phony, the affection behind it might manage to make it reassuring. “I mean, as long as it’s not Matt, there’s hope, right? You can’t really do anything about him being aromantic, but… Come on, who is it? Someone lucky, obviously, but that goes without saying? As long as they’re open to it, we can figure something out. If they really don’t want you back, we can try to find…”

Shiro trails off as Keith’s hands ball up in his sweatshirt. However that sentence was meant to end, Keith doesn’t want to know.

Craning his neck and standing on his toes, leaning over the counter between them, Keith yanks Shiro down into a kiss. Their noses knock against each other but Keith tilts his head, throwing himself into this. His chest feels empty but his pulse bangs in his ears and behind his Adam’s apple. He clings so hard to Shiro’s shirt that, if not for the fabric, his nails would be digging into his palms. This is not good, this is going to go wrong, Shiro might not kill him exactly, but oh shit, oh shit, oh shit — Shiro can’t like this, he won’t, but his mouth is so warm and God, Keith’s thought about this for so long… Shiro’s prosthetic hand lets go of Keith’s shoulder, and of course, he’s going to shove Keith away soon, there’s no other way this ends, but—

Keith whines as Shiro’s prosthetic cups his cheek, as Shiro wraps his organic arm around Keith’s waist. As Shiro deepens the kiss, Keith can’t tell where his heartbeat’s gone. It’s not until he needs to breathe that he lets any space between his mouth and Shiro’s. While Keith pants, Shiro doesn’t give up on holding him.

“Oh, my God… I can’t even…” Shiro huffs, nudging his forehead into Keith’s. He lets out a breathy, half-strangled laugh. “Lance and Allura are never gonna let me live this down… I kept telling them you didn’t? That you’d never—”

“Shiro, I love you so much,” Keith says, backing up just enough to let Shiro get a full view of his face. “But Lance and Allura are not invited to this kiss, okay?”

“Duly noted.” With a fond, open smile, Shiro presses his lips into Keith’s like he never wants to let this go.

#noirsongbird #sheith #keith x shiro #flower shop au #mine: voltron #mine: fic #mine: writing #voltron legendary defender #keith kogane #takashi shirogane #someone please help keith kogane #someone please help takashi shirogane #no seriously someone please help these boys they're such dweebs i'm dying #that said this is basically fluff by my standards #all i did wrong was some mutual pining and references to both of them being in therapy #……and some day i need to let regris be happy too but anyway

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suzanneshannon · 4 years

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Thank You (2019 Edition)

One of our yearly traditions here is to thank all y'all CSS-Tricks readers at the passing of a new year. It means a lot to me that people come here and read the words I write, and the words of all our staff and guest authors that contribute here as well.

Thank you!

Plus, we dig into the numbers this time of year. I've always tried to be open about the analytics on this site. Looking at them year after year always serves up a good reminder: niche blogging is a slow game. There's no hockey-stick growth around here. Never has been, never will be. The trick is to build slowly over time, taking care of the site, investing in it, working hard, and with some luck, numbers trend upward. This year, overall traffic didn't even do that. Sometimes you gotta fight for what you've got! Growth came in other areas though. Let's take a gander.

It was January 1st, 2019 that the current design of this site (v17) debuted, so this entire year overlaps perfectly with that. I'll certainly be tempted to release major iterations with that same timing in the future for comparison sake.

Overall numbers

Google Analytics is showing me 90.3 million pageviews, which is a bit of a decline from 2018 at over 91 million. A 1% decline. Not a big problem, but of course I'd way rather see a 1% increase instead. We'll take that as a kick in the butt to produce a stronger year of content to hopefully more than win it back.

Looks like we published 726 articles over the year, which includes link posts and sponsored links. A good leap from 636 last year and 595 the year before that. Clearly quantity isn't the trick to traffic for us.

I don't know that we'll slow down necessarily. I like the fact that we're publishing multiple times a day with noteworthy links because I like to think of us as a timely industry publication that you can read like a daily or weekly newspaper in addition to being an evergreen reference. I don't think we'll invest in increasing volume, though. Quality moves the needle far more than quantity for this gang.

There is a bunch of numbers I just don't feel like looking at this year. We've traditionally done stuff like what countries people are from, what browsers they use (Chrome-dominant), mobile usage (weirdly low), and things like that. This year, I just don't care. This is a website. It's for everyone in the world that cares to read it, in whatever country they are in and whatever browser they want to. We still track those numbers (because Google Analytics automatically does), so we can visit them again in the future and look historically if it gets interesting again. Taking a quick peak, however, it's not much different than any other year.

Performance numbers are always fascinating. Google Analytics tells me the average page load time is 5.32s. On my fast home internet (even faster at the office), the homepage loads for me in 970ms, but it's more like 30 seconds when throttled to "Slow 3G." "Fast 3G" is 8 seconds. Sorta makes sense that most visitors are on faster-than-3G connections since the traffic is largely skewed toward desktop. No cache, we're talking 54 requests (including ads) and 770KB (fits on a floppy). It's good enough that I'm not itching to dig into a performance sprint.

Top posts of the year

You'd think we would do a section like this ever year, but because of our URL structure, I haven't had easy access to figure this out. Fortunately, in March 2019, Jacob Worsøe helped us add some Custom Dimensions to our Google Analytics so we can track things like author and year with each pageview.

That means we can find things, like the most popular articles written in 2019, rather than just the most popular articles looked at in 2019 — regardless of when they were was written. Here's a graph Jacob sent:

Here's that list in text:

The Great Divide

Change Color of SVG on Hover

New ES2018 Features Every JavaScript Developer Should Know

An Introduction to Web Components

Where Do You Learn HTML & CSS in 2019?

The Many Ways to Change an SVG Fill on Hover (and When to Use Them)

Look Ma, No Media Queries! Responsive Layouts Using CSS Grid

How to Section Your HTML

Prevent Page Scrolling When a Modal is Open

CSS Animation Libraries

8.25% of traffic came from articles written this year. If you look at where these articles fall on the list of all URLs in 2019 (not just those published in 2019), the top article starts at #75! Hard to compete with older articles that have had time to gather SEO steam. This kind of thing makes me want to get re-focused on referential content even more.

Interesting that our top article was editorial, but everything else is referential. I like a little editorial here and there, but clearly our bread and butter is how-to technical stuff.

There are two aspects of search that are interesting to me:

What do people search for right here on the site itself?

What search terms do people use on Google to find this site?

On-site search is handled by Jetpack's Elasticsearch feature, which I'm still quite liking (they are a sponsor, but it's very true). This also means we can track its usage pretty easily using the analytics on my WordPress.com dashboard. I also installed a Search Meter plugin to track search form entries. I can look at Google searches through the SiteKit plugin, which pulls from Google Search Console.

Here are all three, with duplicates removed.

Jetpack Search Data Search Meter Search Data Google Search Data 1 amazon (?!) flexbox flexbox 2 flexbox grid css grid 3 css tricks flex css tricks 4 flexbox guide animation css important 5 css grid svg css triangle 6 css flex position mailto link 7 grid guide css grid vertical align css 8 css important css css comment 9 the great divide border css shapes 10 css shapes background css background image opacity

There is a bit of a fat head of traffic here with our top 10 pages doing about 10% of traffic, which syncs up with those big searches for stuff like flexbox and grid and people landing on our great guides. If you look at our top 100 pages, that goes out to about 38% of traffic, and articles past that are about 0.1% of traffic and go down from there. So I'd say our long tail is our most valuable asset. That mass of articles, videos, snippets, threads, etc. that make up 62% of all traffic.

Social media

It's always this time of year I realize how little social media does for our traffic and feel stupid for spending so much time on it. We pretty much only do Twitter and it accounts for 1% of the traffic to this site. We still have a Facebook page but it's largely neglected except for auto-posting our own article links to it. I find value in Twitter, through listening in on industry conversations and having fun, but I'm going to make a concerted effort to spend less time and energy on our outgoing social media work. If something is worth tweeting for us, it should be worth blogging; and if we blog it, it can be auto-tweeted.

But by way of numbers, we went from 380k followers on @css to 430k. Solid growth there, but the rate of growth is the same every year, to the point it's weirdly consistent.

I also picked up an Instagram account this year. Haven't done much there, but I still like it. For us, I think each post on Instagram can represent this little opportunity to clearly explain an idea, which could ultimately turn into a nice referential book or the like someday. A paultry 1,389 followers there.

Newsletter

I quite like our newsletter. It's this unique piece of writing that goes out each week and gives us a chance to say what we wanna say. It's often a conglomeration of things we've posted to the site, so it's an opportunity to stay caught up with the site, but even those internal links are posted with new commentary. Plus, we link out to other things that we may not mention on the site. And best of all, it typically has some fresh editorial that's unique to the newsletter. The bulk of it is done by Robin, but we all chip in.

All that to say: I think it's got a lot of potential and we're definitely going to keep at it.

We had the biggest leap in subscribership ever this year, starting the year at 40k subscribers and ending at 65k. That's 2.5× the biggest leap in year-over-year subscribers so far. I'd like to think that it's because it's a good newsletter, but also because it's integrated into the site much better this year than it ever has been.

Comments

Oh, bittersweet comments. The bad news is that I feel like they get a little worse every year. There is more spam. People get a little nastier. I'm always teetering on the edge of just shutting them off. But then someone posts something really nice or really helpful and I'm reminded that we're a community of developers and I love them again.

4,710 approved comments. Up quite a bit from 3,788 last year, but still down from 5,040 in 2017. Note that these are approved comments, and it's notable that this entire year we've been on a system of hand-approving all comments before they go out. Last year, I estimated about half of comments make it through that, and this year I'd estimate it at more like 30-40%. So, the straight-up number of comments isn't particularly interesting as it's subject to our attitude on approval. Next year, I plan to have us be more strict than we've ever been on only approving very high-quality comments.

I'm still waiting for WordPress to swoon me with a recommitment to making commenting good again. ;)

Forums

There were a couple of weeks just in December where I literally shut down the forums. They've been teetering on end-of-life for years. The problem is that I don't have time to tend to them myself, nor do I think it's worth paying someone to do so, at least not now. Brass tacks, they don't have any business value and I don't extract enough other value out of them to rationalize spending time on them.

If they just sat there and were happy little forums, I'd just leave them alone, but the problem is spam. It was mostly spam toward the end, which is incredibly tedious to clean up and requires extra human work.

I've kicked them back on for now because I was informed about a spam-blocking plugin that apparently can do incredible work specifically for bbPress spam. Worth a shot!

Interestingly, over the year, the forums generated 7m pageviews, which is 7.6% of all traffic to the site. Sorta makes sense as they are the bulk of the site URLs and they are user-generated threads. Long tail.

Goal review

✅ Polish this new design. Mixed feelings. But I moved the site to a private GitHub repo half-way through the year, and there have been 195 commits since then, so obviously work is getting done. I'll be leaving this design up all of 2020 and I'd like to make a more concerted effort at polish.

✅ Improve newsletter publishing and display. Nailed this one. In March, we moved authoring right here on the site using the new Gutenberg editor in WordPress. That means it's easier to write while being much easier to display nicely on this site. Feels great.

☯️ Raise the bar on quality. I'm not marking it as a goal entirely met because I'm not sure we changed all that much. There was no obvious jump upward in quality, but I think we do pretty good in general and would like to see us continue to hold steady there.

❌ Better guides. We didn't do all that much with guides. Part of the problem is that it's a little confusing. For one thing, we have "guides" (e.g. our guide to flexbox) which is obviously useful and doing well. Then there are "Guide Collections" (e.g. our Custom Properties Guide) which are like hand-picked and hand-ordered selections of articles. I'm not entirely sure how useful those hand-curated guides are, especially considering we also have tag pages which are more sortable. The dudes with the biggest are the hand-written articles-on-steroids types, so that's worth the most investment.

New goals

100k on email list. That would be a jump of 35k which is more than we've ever done. Ambitious. Part of this is that I'm tempted to try some stuff like paid advertising to grow it, so I can get a taste for that world. Didn't Twitter have a special card where people could subscribe right from a Tweet? Stuff like that.

Two guides. The blog-post-on-steroids kind. The flexbox one does great for us, traffic-wise, but I also really enjoy this kind of creative output. I'll be really sad if we can't at least get two really good ones done this year.

Have an obvious focus on how-to referential technical content. This is related to the last goal, but goes for everyday publishing. I wouldn't be mad if every darn article we published started with "How To."

Get on Gutenberg. The new WordPress block editor. This is our most ambitious goal. Or at least I think it is. It's the most unknown because I literally don't know what issues we're going to face when turning it on for more than a decade's worth of content that's been authored in the classic editor. I don't think it's going to hurt anything. It's more a matter of making sure:

authoring posts has all the same functionality and conveniences as we have now,

editing old posts doesn't require any manual conversion work, and

it feels worth doing.

But I haven't even tried yet, so it's a don't-know-what-I-don't-know situation.

Again, thanks so much!

I was thinking about how stage musicians do that thing where they thank their fans almost unfailingly. Across any genre. Even if they say hardly anything into a microphone during the performance, they will at least thank people for coming, if not absolutely gush appreciation at the crowd. It's cliché, but it's not disingenuous. I can imagine it's genuinely touching to look out across a room of people that all choose to spend a slice of their lives listening to you do your thing.

I feel that way here. I can't see you as easily as looking out over a room, but I feel it in the comments you post, the emails you send, the tweets you tagged us in, and all that. You're spending some of your life with us and that makes me feel incredibly grateful. Cheers.

🍻

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