David Korona

Every so often an individual comes along and decides to rattle a few cages.

On Wednesday November 25 2009, the website Drawar published an article titled "Smashing Magazine Killed The Community (Or Maybe It Was Me)", which, understandably, created a considerable amount of buzz in the web design community. In the article, author Paul Scrivens, questioned the path several design related blogs have been venturing due to inspiration from the website Smashing Magazine. I first heard about the article that day from a tweet by, Web Standards Pioneer, Jeffery Zeldman, who agreed with the statements in the Drawar posting. I figure if the article got Zeldman’s attention, it would be well worth taking a deeper look into. If you haven’t read the "How Smashing Magazine Killed The Community" yet, it would be well worth your time to do so.

I felt the points Paul Scrivens presents are valid and I decided to write this follow-up to keep things moving forward. There are a growing number of blogs that continue to post content which is nothing but a long series of links or images. There is no opinion, no voice, no heart in this type of ‘content’; which is exactly why Scriven’s ranting was so well received. Our community is losing it’s voice and it’s heart.

We can’t continue spewing only ‘Listamania’ or link baiting type postings to our readers. For new bloggers there are tons of examples of blogs that regurgitate someone else’s work in a list thus making it a no brainer why most bloggers trade in their voice for this quick, meaningless type of popularity. So just how do we heal this festering wound in our community? Well let’s talk it over in a minute, but first I’ll begin with a story.

Sending a Message

A few nights back, I caught The Dark Knight on television and decided to stay up till the end of the film. I was reminded of the first occasion I viewed the film. How I was mesmerized by the late Health Ledger’s chilling representation of The Joker. Ledger’s award winning performance was the main reason I enjoy the film, the movie itself is not one of my favorites but Ledger’s performance is definitely in a league all its own. Eventually the movie played out to the scene where the Joker is burning his half of the Gotham mobster’s cash savings. As the sadistic clown orders for the last of the Gotham crime bosses to be served to the dogs, the newly crowned king of the Gotham underworld declares the reason for setting his share of the earnings up in smoke.

"It’s not about money, it’s about sending a message."

So what was the point of my little spiel about the latest Batman flick? I would like you to think back to just a few of the listamania type blogs and e-zines currently publishing ‘content’ or pick out any of the over 200 CSS design galleries. What is the first thing you notice along the sidebars of these particular websites? You probably know where I’m going with this, however, I’ll take it a step further. Visit the css Zen Garden; do you see any advertising? Nope! Not a single one.

The css Zen Garden was built with a clear purpose, to demonstrate the power and flexibility of valid, css driven, tabless web design. When Dave Shea launched the website in April 2003 there were only 5 designs total. There are currently 210 designs published with 1039 additional submitted designs; these numbers are growing constantly. To this day there are no other websites quite like css Zen Garden or as appreciated. Through this one website, Dave Shea has inspired thousands of web designers, both novice and expert, to change how they thought about designing for the web. The css Zen Garden will be forever remembered for its contribution and inspiration to web standards.

Now to makes things perfectly clear, I’m not anti-advertising. In fact many of the websites I frequently visit have their share of sidebar, banner advertising and deserve every penny from it. Nor do I believe every website you publish has to be the next css Zen Garden straight out of the gate. The point is, what exactly is your website’s plan? Did you build a website around an idea that you thought would be a quick way to get rich? How do you want to be remembered? Do you want to publish material that inspires the masses or are you just here to enjoy your five minutes of e-fame? What messages are you sending?

Patience and Nurture

So now some of you may be questioning your blogging methods, perhaps grunting at the idea of having to put forth actual effort in your content. Like everything else in life, if it’s worth doing, it’s not going to be easy. The good news is, if you put in the effort with your heart, the results will eventually come. These results will also be much more worthwhile. But everyone knows how to make a list, how are you supposed to create meaningful content? Simple. Find something you enjoy and then you write about it, passionately. I know, it’s a groundbreaking idea isn’t it? You can thank me later.

Sorry, there’s no top-secret formula or series of perfectly planned steps to share. You have to take measures to create your own formula and walk there in your own shoes. Great things take heart and a bit of elbow grease.

In April of 2007, a small website by the name of FreelanceSwitch opened its doors to would-be freelancers everywhere. The website was created to be a bank of entrepreneurial knowledge headed by Collis Ta’eed. Their first article, “A Comprehensive Guide to Starting Your Freelance Career”, was the just the beginning of the series of content FreelanceSwitch was going to share.

Collis also had another little known tutorial blog by the name of Psdtuts, which dark brown layout I remember very well. On Psdtuts, Collis shared his wealth of Photoshop tips and advice in numerous well written tutorials. There was no other tutorial website like it anywhere else, at the time, and it quickly became a cloned business model for other graphic artists looking to open a tutorial website. Psdtuts also set in motion the many other tutorial blogs part of the Tuts+ family such as Nettuts, AudoTuts and Vectortuts to name a few.

Presently, both Psdtuts and FreelanceSwitch are just two of the several blogs under the Envato Network; a rapidly growing series of blogs created by Collis Ta’eed, his wife and their talented staff. Collis built a business around the things he loved, without resorting to regurgitated content. There are the odd posts where resources are shared in link and image lists, but there numbers are far fewer than the number of quality postings presented by the Envato family. Collis can currently be found writing over at The Netsetter where he continues to share his experiences dealing with startups and web business.

There are several other bloggers I could go on about that didn’t rise to fame by throwing other people’s concepts and artwork in a list and plastering them on their website. I choose to talk about Collis because if it wasn’t for the articles published on FreelanceSwitch and being able to watch Psdtuts grow into such a hugely successful blog, I probably would still be stuck in boring 9 to 5 job. It was amazing watching what just these two websites grew into in only a few years and it gave me inspiration to do something meaningful for the web on my own. These are the types of resources the web needs more of.

Small Steps Towards Higher Means

It sounds counterintuitive but the article that got you the most traffic isn’t necessarily the one you want to keep cloning. You need to lead with your heart and not by what others demand. The content you publish should be that which you love to discuses and share with others. I’m nowhere near as successful as Collis or Smashing Magazine, and, for now, that’s ok; heck I just opened up a few weeks ago, the world owes me nothing. I would prefer taking my time building meaningful relationships with positive, like-minded individuals than meaningless relationships with random, one time visitors who offer only negativity.

It takes several years to build something up to a success, years always scare people because it sounds like a lot of work over a long, long time. Mind the cliché but time really does fly when you’re having fun; if you enjoy what you do than those several years will go by faster than the blink of an eye. It’s easy to throw up your hands, give up and turn to a Google search for content just because it will spike your traffic; but it’s hardly rewarding.

To their credit, Smashing Magazine did reply back to Paul Scrivens and they did so with class. Smashing Mag understands that listmania content can only take you so far and has promised to evolve from being mostly list content. There is definitely a lot of great writing in Smashing Magazine such as the article released just today, "How To Support Internet Explorer and Still Be Cutting Edge" written by Inayaili de Leon. This single article has, currently, been shared over 5000 times via Twitter alone already. I really do look forward to this movement further inspiring the current "Smashing Clones" to begin evolving as well; they will find a much more satisfying journey on their rise to success.