Learn CSS From Scratch isn’t happening and other updates

Now that we created the Learn CSS course that is free to everyone, the Learn CSS From Scratch course is redundant. The membership perks are changing too.

In May, me and a team of extremely talented people released Learn CSS—a free CSS course on the web.dev site. It’s gone down really well which is amazing because let me tell you—we grafted hard on that course to make it as useful for as many people as possible. I originally planned to still produce Learn CSS From Scratch, but will no longer be doing that.

Big changes around here

I’ve decided to cancel Learn CSS From Scratch permanently because really, I’ve already produced it as part of the Learn CSS team. It’s worked better for you too, because producing that course in a team of frankly, CSS legends, means that the content is legit as hell and bang-on spec. This means you can trust the quality of content 100%.

I’m also stopping making courses for the foreseeable future and very likely, reducing the amount of writing I do in general. At the end of 2020, I declared that this year I would be further reducing client work and being a “creator” full time. I’ll be honest pals, I haven’t enjoyed it and I’m going to pull up the handbrake and do a u-turn.

Since late-2020 I have had 3 bouts of mild burnout that thankfully, I’ve been able to manage, because I know the signs from much more severe bouts. I had to analyse why this kept happening and it’s pretty clear that always having to be “on” when making money being a “creator” is fucking stressful and there’s little to no work-life balance. You have to be “on” because that’s how you keep the content sales up: simple as that. I was essentially doing a devrel job without the safety of a salary.

Added to the stress of this is the fact that the market is extremely crowded at the moment. Look, I get it: the pandemic has pulled the rug from under a lot of folk’s feet and it makes total sense to get some passive income on the go. In fact, I recommend doing that if you can because it definitely takes the pressure off, whether you are full-time employed or independent. The problem I’ve had is that you have to be extra “on” to get on top of this and frankly, I don’t want to. It doesn’t suit me—my identity is so much more than tech. My work-life balance has been far too much work, too.

The best thing about being an independent is that I can make changes, pretty quickly. I was fortunate that a very good opportunity arrived for a client and I took it. This has me mostly booked for the rest of the year. Getting back on client work feels good because working only on content was making me really lose my edge. There’s no real challenge doing nothing but greenfield work all the time and it was having a big impact on my willingness to create material. Dealing with real-life challenges with work generally inspires my best writing and this has been missing.

Membership

I’m going to keep the membership open because we’ve got a lovely Discord community going. There’s upcoming changes to content pricing, so with that, the perks of the membership are changing. I’m still working on the wording of this for the site, but essentially, the membership is $5 for access to a private Discord server and an ad-free experience around the site.

I’m going to stop doing a newsletter for members now. I tried some new stuff—especially behind the scenes stuff—but it’s just not flowing as I hoped it would. Thanks to all of you who have said nice things about it though.

The Discord community really is coming together nicely now. We’ve got a lovely group of people who are all looking after each other. It’s a real joy to be in there. Moderation and admin does take time so I’ll be keeping it as a paid-only thing. Making it paid-only keeps it small and manageable too!

Wrapping up

I’m going to chill out on writing for a bit and focus on designing and writing some code for clients for a while. I’ll definitely be producing tutorials and articles for this site in the future though.

To everyone who has supported my work, thank you so much. You’re all great and I appreciate you a lot.

If you haven’t already, go and do the Learn CSS course. I can guarantee you’ll get good at CSS with it!

Hello, I’m Andy and I’ll help you to level up your front-end development skills.

I'm a designer and front-end developer who has worked in the design and web industries for over 15 years, and in that time, I have worked with some of the largest organisations in the world, like Google, Harley-Davidson, BSkyB, Unilever, The Natural History Museum, Oracle, Capita, Vice Media and the NHS.

On Piccalilli, I share my knowledge and experience to make you a better front-end developer.

I'm the founder of Set Studio, a creative agency that specialises in building stunning websites that work for everyone. Check out what we're all about.