Thank You (2024 Edition)
I'm more thankful this time around because, last year, I didn't even get to write this post. But now that I'm back, writing this feels so, so, so good. There's a lot more gusto going into my writing when I say: thank you so very much! Let's tie a bow on this year and round up what happened around here in 2024. Thank You (2024 Edition) originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.
I’ll be honest: writing this post feels like a chore some years. Rounding up and reflecting on what’s happened throughout the year is somewhat obligatory for a site like this, especially when it’s a tradition that goes back as far as 2007. “Hey, look at all the cool things we did!”
This year is different. Much different. I’m more thankful this time around because, last year, I didn’t even get to write this post. At this time last year, I was a full-time student bent on earning a master’s degree while doing part-time contract work.
But now that I’m back, writing this feels so, so, so good. There’s a lot more gusto going into my writing when I say: thank you so very much! It’s because of you and your support for this site that I’m back at my regular job. I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that, so please accept my sincerest gratitude and appreciation. Thank you!
Let’s tie a bow on this year and round up what happened around here in 2024.
Overall traffic
Is it worth saying anything about traffic? This site’s pageviews had been trending down since 2020 as it has for just about any blog about front-end dev, but it absolutely cratered when the site was on pause for over a year. Things began moving again in late May, but it was probably closer to mid-June when the engine fully turned over and we resumed regular publishing.
And, yes. With regular publishing came a fresh influx of pageviews. Funny how much difference it makes just turning on the lights.
All said and done, we had 26 million unique pageviews in 2024. That’s exactly what we had in 2023 as traffic went into a tailspin, so I call it a win that we stopped the bleeding and broke even this year.
Publishing
A little bit of history when it comes to how many articles we publish each year:
- 2020: 1,183 articles
- 2021: 890 articles (site acquired by DigitalOcean)
- 2022: 390 articles
- 2023: 0 articles (site paused)
- 2024: 153 articles (site resumed in late June)
Going from 0 articles to 153 (including this one) in six months was no small task. I was the only writer on the team until about October. There are only three of us right now; even then, we’re all extremely part-time workers. Between us and 19 guest authors, I’d say that we outperformed expectations as far as quantity goes — but I’m even more proud of the effort and quality that goes into each one. It’s easy to imagine publishing upwards of 400 articles in 2025 if we maintain the momentum.
Case in point: we published a whopping three guides in six months:
That might not sound like a lot, so I’ll put it in context. We published just one guide in 2022 and our goal was to write three in all of 2021. We got three this year alone, and they’re all just plain great. I visit Juan’s Anchor Positioning guide as much as — if not more than — I do the ol’ Flexbox and Grid guides.
On top of that, we garnered 34 new additions to the CSS-Tricks Almanac! That includes all of the features for Anchor Positioning and View Transitions, as well as other new features like @starting-style. And the reason spent so much time in the Almanac is because we made some significant…
Site updates
This is where the bulk of the year was spent, so let’s break things out into digestible chunks.
Almanac
We refreshed the entire thing! It used to be just selectors and properties, but now we can write about everything from at-rules and functions to pseudos and everything in between. We still need a lot of help in there, so maybe consider guesting writing with us.
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