If I had to choose one favorite thing about CSS-Tricks, much like the numerous hits by Tom Petty, it would be that we take moments like this to pause and write authentically. Despite being a highly technical site with complex web development jargon, we’re a group of people learning together to improve in areas like design, development, accessibility, performance, or any other aspect of front-end responsibilities.
This marks my tenth year at CSS-Tricks. I recall when CSS-Tricks turned 10, which felt significant then. So, imagine how I feel about my age today.
Ultimately, I want to express my gratitude. Thanks to people like you and the small team contributing here, I get to make this my day job. It’s the best job I’ve had, made possible because you consistently show up to read, learn, share, and discuss all things front-end (and a bit of CSS) with us.
Thank you, thank you… thank you!
Let me share some highlights from 2025 — a year filled with milestones and interesting twists.
Overall Site Traffic
To get straight to the point: there were 20 million unique views in 2025, a significant drop from last year’s 26 million. The decline is evident from July when Google added AI summaries to search results. We’re down 23% for the year, with the real month-over-month impact closer to 30%. Ouch.
It’s painful, and I often blame myself, but it’s consistent with other sites I work with and what I’ve heard from other publishers in this field.
I dislike saying “it is what it is,” but we’re amidst a new reality in digital publishing. I’m still processing it because, obviously, views pay the bills here, and we need to adapt. There are still plenty of reasons to create websites today. Making them sustainable, though, is becoming more challenging, even if new CSS features make development more enjoyable.
This brings me back to the start of this post: Thank you for showing up. It means the world to us and me personally. The first and best way to support CSS-Tricks is to continue showing up.
Publishing By The Numbers
Here’s a brief history of the number of articles we’ve published 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)
This year? We’re aiming for 255 articles. Considering there are 261 weekdays in 2025, that’s nearly an article per day, and the year isn’t over yet. In fact, if we count this post and what’s left on the publishing calendar, we’re looking at exactly 261 articles for the year. It’s like we’re your weekday companion at work!
This includes the largest addition to the Almanac in a year, perhaps ever. We’ve added 101 Almanac entries as of today and will add three more by year’s end. The Almanac is my favorite part of the site. While you can find great CSS documentation elsewhere, the time and effort we put into explaining CSS features like one developer to another sets us apart. Where else would you enjoy learning about a trigonometry function like atan2()?
Let’s Keep Talking About the Almanac
…because that’s where we invested most of our time and energy. You may recall that the Almanac has historically been a place to learn about CSS properties and pseudos. Last year, we enhanced the Almanac with new sections to cover all possible CSS features, including functions, selectors, and at-rules.
Believe it or not, I’m pretty sure we’ve added every single at-rule this year. We started with zero CSS functions and ended with 64.
We also made the Almanac easier to navigate. Now, you can get high-level information about any feature without having to click through to the full page:
And we label experimental and shorthand properties:
And you can explore the constituent properties for each shorthand:
We even added a touch of modern CSS with scroll-driven animation:
The Team
Last year, I introduced Juan Diego Rodriguez and Ryan Trimble as regular contributors. They play a significant role, and I can’t imagine managing without them. They’re my second and third pair of eyes when I’m uncertain, which is often.
Now, we have a fourth pair of eyes! Danny Schwarz, a long-time contributor, is stepping up to help us stay on top of timely matters. CSS is evolving faster than I can remember, and it’s easy for things to slip under the radar, even when tracking this stuff is your day job. Danny has keen insight and has started reporting what he finds in a series called What’s !Important. The first edition was released recently, and we’ll maintain this bi-weekly.
Between editions, Danny publishes a feed of Quick Hits that you can follow for more web platform news and happenings.
It takes a village, my friends!
Goal Review
