Why I’m So Excited About the New Tuts+ Premium

Why I’m So Excited About the New Tuts+ Premium

on Nov 29th 2011 with 86 comments

Hey, guys! For the last several months, I’ve had the pleasure of helping out, top-secret, on the relaunch of Tuts+ Premium. After months of work, it’s out in the wild! If you have a second, let me know show you what’s new.

Massive Redesign

We’ll be the first to admit that the old layout was in huge need of revision. That’s why we hired the incredibly talented Orman Clark to work on a new, updated layout. I think it turned out wonderfully.

Courses!

I’m a huge fan of taking a skill, and breaking it down as much as possible into bits and pieces that can easily be consumed. Ten minutes a day, and, at the end of the month, you’ve learned a new technology. That’s what our new courses are for!

We’ve launched with five massively in depth courses, and will continue adding more at a rate of around three per month. Here’s a few that will appeal specifically to you guys:

  • CSS3 Essentials – In this course, we’ll cover the essentials of what you absolutely must know about CSS3. This means we’ll review the basics, like border-radius and box-shadow; but, we’ll also work our way up to more advanced techniques, such as using animations to add flair to your designs.
  • 30 Days to Your First Website Design – Ready to design your first website but not sure how to start? Ian Yates, Editor of Webdesigntuts+ and veteran web designer, walks you through every step of getting your first web design up and running. From the planning stages up until the pages go live, you’ll get expert guidance on how to make sure your first design gets done… and done right.
  • 30 Days to Learn HTML and CSS – Even if your goal is not to become a web designer, learning HTML and CSS can be an amazing tool to have in your skill-set – both in the workplace, and at home. If this has been on your to-do list for some time, why don’t you take thirty days and join me? Give me around ten minutes every day, and I’ll teach you the essentials of HTML and CSS. And don’t worry…we start at the beginning!
  • Create Killer Build Scripts with Phing – In this 12-part Premium screencast course, I’m going to teach you exactly how to work with the popular build script tool, Phing. Phing allows us to automate so many of the things we do manually for each project, such as compressing and concatenating code, FTPing files, and pushing projects to GitHub. When you’re ready to dig in, just push play!

Also in the queue are courses on HTML5, WordPress Plugin Development, Professional Screencasting, and much more!

…And, if you have a question about a lesson in a particular course, just head over to the Tuts+ Premium forums to discuss it with your fellow members and the course instructor.

eBooks

We’ve worked with Rockable Press and Smashing Magazine to provide their respective catalogs of eBooks free to all Premium members. That’s hundreds upon hundreds of dollars worth of eBooks for $19 a month. Here’s a handful that you might enjoy:

Getting Good with JavaScript

Getting Good with JavaScript

Professional Web Design

Professional Web Design

How to be a Rockstar WordPress Designer

How to be a Rockstar WordPress Designer

Theme Tumblr Like a Pro

Theme Tumblr Like a Pro

Over 700 Exclusive Tutorials

In addition to the newly added courses and eBooks, we still have our insanely huge library of exclusive Premium tutorials. At the time of this writing, Tuts+ Premium contains over 700, including these:

  • Next Generation JavaScript with AMD and RequireJS – I don’t know about you, but I’m always looking for better ways to organize my JavaScript. Recently (only a week or so ago), I’ve discovered what seems to be the best pattern yet. In this tutorial, I’ll introduce you to AMD: Asynchronous Module Definition and RequireJS. Hang on tight; it’ll be a wild ride!
  • The Magic of WordPress Custom Post Types – In this in depth video tutorial, I’ll teach you how to use custom post types, taxonomies, and meta boxes to extend your WordPress application into CMS-like territory.
  • A Massive Guide to Custom Theming jQuery UI Widgets – jQuery UI is an open source library of interface components that features interactions, animation effects and ready-to-use widgets. jQuery UI is based on the jQuery JavaScript library and is themeable, which makes integrating jQuery UI easy for developers of any skill level to integrate into their web pages and applications.
  • Build your Own JavaScript Library – Over the course of the past few years, the JavaScript community has exploded exponentially. It it’s safe to assume that libraries are the primary reason we’ve seen such astonishing growth. Thanks to these libraries, the differences between the popular browsers are minimized, making cross-browser development much easier than it used to be.
  • How to Build a Custom S3 Uploader – Ever wondered how to create a form that can upload multiple files directly to your desired S3 bucket? While tools like S3Fox and Transmit certainly get the job done quite well, sometimes we need a simpler, one-click interface for our clients. We’ll build one today!

    For $19 – It’s Worth It

    After listening to all of the input from our users, we think we’ve produced an exceptional Version Two of Tuts+ Premium. I hope you agree! If you sign up, come say hi in our forums!

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    I'm the editor of Nettuts+, and love making the process of building for the web as easy as possible. I'm incredibly passionate about modern software development, and am the author of Laravel Testing Decoded! If you want be friends, say hi on Twitter.  

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    ← Older Comments
    • Mark Twigg

      As a current premium member I’m disappointed in the 100%+ price hike. Ok you have the argument you get free e-books, but what if they have no value to me? Even if they do have value once you have paid a few months to cover the price of the books then what are you getting? You’re simply paying 110% more for not much else. Unless you are planning on releasing a new e-book every month?

      For me anyway its already put me off and I wont be going for it.

      As someone else said Lynda.com has well over 1100 full length video tuts (about 69000 individual videos according to them) covering many aspects of computer use and web design/development and at $25 a month is a much better deal than the $19 your offering. Just my opinion others may like paying the extra cash EVERY month for a few e-books.

      O and to answer your question “Why I’m So Excited About the New Tuts+ Premium” its because it going to make you a lot more money for not a lot more effort.

    • James

      The redesign looks nice enough and having courses is pretty cool, but I don’t see how this is worth $19 a month. Several people here have mentioned Lynda.com which I think I’ll look into now since it has such a huge selection of courses. I do like what you’re doing here with tuts+, but I really do think you’re overcharging for your content.

    • Ramon

      I actually came to consider becoming a premium member again after I stopped being one a while back.
      This because I often didn’t find what I was looking for. With the new pricetag, it’s a no go for me. I really like the ‘Way”s presentation and pace but going from 9 to 19 just puts me off bigtime.

    • http://www.appscient.co Craig

      I was interested in a premium membership because I enjoy the free articles I have seen thus far. I already get lynda.com as part of my school tuition. I learn a lot from their site. My concern is with the timing of the price increase. I agree, the ebooks is a great addition. I also know that in order to be competitive you need to price yourself well. At the new rate of $19 per month, you put yourself in the same price as lynda.com. What I gage from this is that your content should be on the same level as theirs in order to compete. You have entered a different segment of the market. By entering this segment you will need to compete with sites like lynda.com in terms of the amount of content and quality. If I understand things correctly, right now there are only 4 new courses. I can understand the price increase if the amount of content was already there, but what I hear is that it is not. I believe you guys do an increadbile job and I want you to be successful.
      With my premium membership I have now with lynda.com I get all the exercise files and access to an unheard of number of tutorials. If I had to pay for this membership alone, I couldn’t. I would have to go with their basic membership which does not include all the exercise files. This would be fine with me. Otherwise I wouldn’t pay for their service.
      I would be more tempted to sign up if there were multiple levels each with different benefits that justify the price. Just my thoughts. Thanks for all you do!

    • gust

      Netflix price hike anyone?

    • gust

      Netflix price hike?

    • Sinan Kocak

      The reason: “we are increasing the price because we are doing this this and this” seem to be a bit unlogical to me. Because like the most comments already pointed it out. Tutsplus+ isn’t offering as much as other similar websites like lynda.com for example. I’m sure that if tutsplus kept the price 9$ they would have more premium subscribers. Just like someone already said what would u prefer: 20 subscribers for 200$ or 500 subscribers for 20$. Some product designers just get 80 cents per product. But because they are selling it worldwide they are making lots of money from it. So i don’t really believe that is the reason. I hope they change the price how it was. Otherwise i will stop my premium membership also. Because i think that the free tutorials will be similar if not same as the standard premium tutorials so that the premium+ will get more attention. But hey. That is only my opinion. I do want to thank for some tutorials where i learned a lot from. Thanks and good luck

    • Keith Ryu

      I really want to be a premium member, but as other people have noted, I don’t see how throwing a few ebooks justifies the increase in price for EVERY month. I would understand if it is 19$ for only the first month, but it’s not like you guys are releasing new book every month. So after the first month, we would be paying extra for something that adds no value to us.

      I’m also a student, and I wish there was an alternative/cheaper option for us.

      • http://www.jeffrey-way.com Jeffrey Way
        Author

        It’s more than a few ebooks, and we’ll be adding more over the course of the year. Plus, in addition to the standard offerings, we’re also adding 3 in depth courses every single month.

    • EMinor

      I,ve asking for over a year for an alternatve payment than paypal, i though someone at envato would have enough business savy to offer some type of credit card payment process. You would think someone would finally wake down under and smell the coffee. Looks like I’m goning to Lynda.com too !

    • Serge

      I have just subscribe to tuts+ for 19$ a month.
      After having, actually, looked around at the available content, especially the e-books section, I can’t get rid of the feeling that I paid too much.. May be this feeling will go away with time..

    ← Older Comments