For the past few months, Tim has been tasked with the important job of curating selections of high quality links every weekday. In addition to managing our new link submission platform, Tim has also begun handling other administrative processes at Tut9, and is continuing to become an important part of our development.

About Tim Smith

Tim is a web designer working from sunny San Diego, California, where he works as the Lead Designer and Co- Founder of an awesome new start-up called Bundly. Tim tells us that “Bundly is revolutionizing the way you have fun and share new experiences with the people that matter“, and we’re excited to see where it goes. In the past, Tim has collaborated with some amazing companies, most notably Fuel Brand Inc as Editor-In-Chief of Fuel Your Blogging.

You can find out more about Tim, and what he’s up to on his personal site, and from his Twitter.

Be sure to say “Hi” and check out Tim’s other projects. He’s constantly around the site making sure things are operating smoothly!

Here’s the deal: WordPress is by far the largest self-hosted blogging platform in the world. The Tut9 community has expressed interest in more WordPress resources. It seemed like it would be a lot of fun to give WordPress users a slice of time on Tut9.

So, over the next few Wednesday’s, we’ll be posting WordPress tutorials & downloads only. We’ll even try to take on any WordPress related questions you have (and hopefully the community can help you find your answer).

If after a few Wednesday’s things aren’t working out, we’ll revisit the idea.

What about Joomla/EE/Drupal/etc

As you’ve probably noticed, Joomla often times is not WordPress, so there will be no place for it on Wednesday’s. But that’s OK.

On all other days of the week, we’ll still be posting resources for everything else. On those days, you can submit Joomla and Drupal resources to your hearts content.

If Tut9 readers seem to really like another platform, we may consider starting another feature spot like this.

How does WordPress Wednesday sound to you? Are you a WordPress user, and if so are there any specific kinds of resources you’re looking for?

Member Notifications

One of the big goals of the new Tutorial9 is cultivating a fun, and helpful social experience. We’ve got our work cut out for us in this ambition.

Member notifications are the first step in providing more meaningful discussion on the site. With notifications, tracking your personal discussions on Tutorial9 is much easier. If someone replies to a comment you make, you can quickly jump to that comment and follow-up if you choose to (or give them an upvote if they were helpful!)

Comment reply notifications will especially come in handy in socially geared forums on Tutorial9, something you’ll hear more about very soon.

The system can only track discussions for registered Tutorial9 members. At the moment, only comment replies are tracked, but further functionality is planned (link approved/denied, tracking specific discussions). An option to receive email updates is also in the works.

New Stickers

We’ve added several new stickers in the first few days post-launch. Many more are planned (as well as a system for creating your own).

The new stickers are Talkative, 30 Comments, and The Big One-Zero-Zero. They are unlocked for leaving 10, 30, and 100 comments.

More stickers coming soon folks! We’ve had to focus a lot of our efforts on fixing some bugs this week!

We <3 hearing from you

It really makes our day when people let us know how we’re doing (the good & bad, it’s all very useful to us)! Let us know if you have any thoughts, ideas, or if you have a bone to pick with us.

Changelog:

• Added a notifications system that shows users replies to comments they’ve made. Additional notification types coming soon.
• Fixed an error that was not allowing users to recover passwords.
• New Stickers added: “Talkative”, “30 Comments”, “The Big One-One-Zero”
• Minor style fixes (Thanks Andrew for help with CSS3 Transitions)
• Thumbnails no longer required when submitting links to speed up the process. Thumbnails generated by Tutorial9 staff.
• Share buttons added to posts, downloads, and links (Twitter & Facebook).
• Default Tutorial9 Feed now shows posts and links. [Custom feeds coming soon]
• Performance tweaks.

New Mission

The new Tutorial9 has been built around one central idea: We want to share only the best resources for designers, every day.

Our new site combines our own frequent original content, and aggregates outstanding content from other publishers. We are not another digg-clone though—all of the links submitted to Tutorial9 are manually approved by very picky editors. By putting our reputation on the line in our cooperative selection of links, we know our readers can trust that they’re being served only the best of the best.

A Change in Philosophy

But the new Tutorial9 isn’t just about a user submitted links system. We are very much an entirely new Tutorial9. One of the biggest changes that we’re making may come as a shock to some of our older viewers: We’re moving on from being a completely “free” experience.

Up until now, we’ve depended entirely on ad revenue to power one of the largest tutorial publications online. We constantly were going over our monthly budget that for paying contributors. The only answer for us in the past has been: “Well, guess we better create some new ad positions and hope they sell.”

Truthfully, we think this model could probably keep up for several more years just fine. Long term however, we’re not sure this model is sustainable. If ad inventory is limitless, the value is… well, awful. Not to mention, ads start to look messy very quickly when there are too many of them. The long-term sustainability of low-end advertising online is iffy at best for medium to large publishers.

As explained though, it’s very difficult to constantly publish top-notch tutorials and downloads when limited by ad revenue. For this reason, we’re developing a “Club” program that will grant members access to extra materials (and a very powerful license) for a small monthly fee. More details on this program will be available soon.

New Membership System

One of the most obvious new features on Tutorial9 is our new membership system. With the new Tutorial9, we’re attempting to build an engaging community around the best design resources available online. Our membership system provides a few really neat metrics for seeing your status in the community:

Stickers

Stickers are collectable items that can be earned by performing certain actions around Tutorial9. They keep a historical account of your accomplishments in the community, and provide users with fun-to-achieve goals.

Did you submit your first link to Tutorial9? Have a sticker. Was one of your comments especially insightful or helpful? Yup.

Each sticker is documented in your own personal Sticker Collection (example) where you can see your achievements, or share them with others. When a member unlocks a sticker, they’re also awarded with a certain number of Cloud Points, which brings us to…

Cloud Points

Cloud Points are the currency for your actions in the Tutorial9 community. Points are earned whenever somebody upvotes a comment you posted, whenever you unlock a sticker, and whenever you perform a variety of other tasks on the site. At the moment, they’re a great way to see how much value you’ve added to the Tutorial9 community, but in the future they might just be worth something a bit more tangible…

Progress of the Preview

The Tutorial9 Preview will be updated in iterations as we’re ready to reveal new features. If you find something out of place, please send us a quick email telling us about the problem. We’ll be posting regular updates here detailing fixes and changes as we make them.

This is only a preview. We wanted to share the new experience with our readers before the final product is ready, and hopefully let our community share in the creation of the completed website. Your feedback is greatly appreciated, and we look forward to having you participate in this preview with us.

We know how it is, which is why we’re finally offering a new way of following Tutorial9.

Now you can Follow Tutorial9 on Twitter.

Yeah, we know: “Social Media” can be a big pain. Trust us, we’re not hear to blow your eardrums with lots of useless retweets and unnecessary plugs. If you want the fastest way to keep up with Tutorial9, this is for you.

I was already following Tutorial9…

Great! We’ve had a presence on Twitter in the past, but we’ve given it zero commitment. We recognize now that Twitter is a legitimate means for distributing updates, and want to offer something to our fans that is valuable and informative.

Twitter can be a lot of things. We’re not looking to be one of those painfully-obnoxious tweeters, but rather provide a useful service for our users.

Give us a follow if you want the most up to date freebies, tutorials, and announcements from Tutorial9.

We’ve learned a lot in these two years, and today we’d like to celebrate self-education. Tutorials aren’t about how you can become more like someone else, but instead how you can teach yourself important skills, and then apply the right processes and your own ideas to the right project. We stand firmly on the idea that self-education is one of the most important principles of our time…when the world says you should be more like someone else, and when mediocrity is praised, we believe in striving to be the best you can possibly be in whatever interests you.

Tutorial9 is a platform that enables self-education, and doing what is right.

And we’ve learned a thing or two ourselves these past few years…

Tutorial9 Re-thought

We’re in the process of rebranding Tutorial9, and shifting some of our fundamental building blocks. Right now, we serve over 50,000 users a constant stream of new tutorials and resources, and we do a pretty good job at it. These tutorials however are often very specific. While they are useful teaching tools, they only offer a small slice of an overall practice at any given time.

In the new Tutorial9 we want to offer both small slices, as well as comprehensive sets of tools for entire projects. These Tool Boxes will provide all the necessary knowledge and means for completing complex projects of your own.

Want to create a WordPress theme from scratch? A WordPress Theme Toolbox might contain all the building blocks for designing a theme in Photoshop, putting it into code, and then offer a plethora of extras such as incorporating featured posts, or adding custom template files.

The idea here isn’t to show you how to build a specific site, but rather while you’re building a site using Tutorial9 as a reference where you can quickly find the right tool to get the job done. And this isn’t just a concept for website designers… For example, there could be tool boxes for:

• Model Photography – Forms needed, lighting setup, useful equipment
• Business Cards – Where to print, Coupons, Best Practices
• Retouching Photos – Photoshop Tools, Case studies, Enhancements

The possibilities are endless, but the idea is that for every project, a specific set of tools can be used to get the job done quicker and better.

New Look

There will be plenty of changes and improvements around Tutorial9 alongside Tool Boxes, but one of the most noticeable changes is going to be the new look. We’re changing everything to better reflect who we are, including our brand.

When we’re ready, it will be time to say goodbye to the old cloud, and hello to the new:

All of Tutorial9 is becoming more streamlined, faster, easier to use. We know how people use the site, and there are plenty of improvements we are making so that you waste less time, and find what you need more quickly.

When will it be ready?

We’re working hard to prepare the new Tutorial9 experience, but as you may imagine, there is a lot to be done. We’re in no rush to get this out before it’s ready, and there is a good chance you won’t see any big changes around here until late 2010. We can’t share any more details about the new Tutorial9 at this time, but we can listen to your thoughts about the current experience here. If you want to influence the new Tutorial9, please contact us and tell us what you’d like to see. We’ll definitely see a lot of people requesting one feature or telling us how another feature should be scrapped, and as usual, the truth will be somewhere in the middle. Your thoughts are important to us though, and do help us deliver a more useful experience.

Thanks for another great year folks!

We’ve made it through 2009, and what a fantastic year it’s been for us. In the past 12 months, we’ve grown by over 400%, have enlisted many new talented contributors, and have helped tens of thousands of new designers around the world.

We’re very proud of what’s been accomplished, and have everyone here to thank for it. Without the wonderful contributors here at Tutorial9, our friends from around the web, and the loyal support of our viewers none of this would be possible…so we say both Thank you, and Fantastic Job.

Our Gift to You

It’s been a tough year for many of us. The state of the economy has tragically caused millions of people to lose jobs, and while we all hope for the best it’s still uncertain for many how to pull through.

The recession has also been troubling for many great charitable causes around the globe. With less people being able to give this year, international and local charities have had trouble meeting their needs this past year.

In response to the economic climate, and the great support you’ve given us over the past year, Tutorial9 is donating $1,000 on behalf of the incredible design community we’ve cultivated over the past year and a half.

We’re donating this money to Save The Children, an organization that helps create lasting change for children around the world. With government awarded grants, the United States Agency for International Development will typically provide $1-4 for every dollar used by Save The Children—potentially giving back up to $5,000 that can be used to help kids around the globe.

It’s not much, but we’re more than happy to give back thanks to all you’ve given us.

You can Help Make a Difference Too!

It’s 100% understandable that many people can’t give back right now, and for them we have high hopes that the new year brings new and exciting opportunities. If you are in a position to give though, right now charities could use a little extra push.

Whether you can give time, some extra cash to your favorite organization, or even donate to Save the Children… Every little bit helps.

Thanks, and Happy New Year!

Thanks for another great year folks! <3

We wish you all the best in 2010, and look forward to an even better year than 2009. Thanks again for all of the help so far, and for your continued support into the new year.

<3,
Tutorial9