The past year has been an exciting time for Tuts+. We started the first chapter in a story that we plan to continue for years to come and, although we’re just getting going, it’s good to take a look back as a new year begins!

The New Tuts+

First and foremost is the launch of the Tuts+ redesign, the ultimate aim of which is to bring all our individual Tuts+ sites into one mobile-friendly, easy-to-navigate, delightful reading experience. A handful of our sites have been integrated into this new platform over the past few months, and we’ll be moving the remainder over during the first few months of 2014. This new single Tuts+ site should make it easier to find the resources you’re looking for, discover tutorials you wouldn’t otherwise have found, and learn in a more enjoyable environment.

More Team and Editor Collaboration

Behind the scenes, we’ve been bringing our individual site editors closer together. Although we’re made up of a team of people who are scattered around the globe (from Australia and Thailand, to the US and Canada), we’re working more closely in teams, collaborating on the broader topics that we’re covering in the Tuts+ Hub, and publishing more tutorials that cross over between sections. We’ll be continuing to build on this foundation in 2014.

The London Meetup

We organised a community meetup for Tuts+ readers (and the wider Envato community) in London. It was a pleasure to meet many of you who read and enjoy our sites every day, and we came back with lots of wonderful feedback and suggestions for how we can better serve the community. I wrote a blog post about the meetup back in November—head there if you want to hear more about how it all went down.

The New Courses Website

We’re beginning to simplify how we present our course library, and make it easier to purchase in different ways. Tuts+ Premium courses are gradually moving to a completely new home, where you can now buy them individually. Eventually this will also be the home of all Tuts+ courses, and you’ll be able to choose how best to purchase them—individually, or as a subscription to the entire library—to suit your needs. If you’d like to know more about why we decided to make this change, Xavier has a full run-down.

Drawing FreelanceSwitch to a Close

As part of a company-wide effort to consolidate our focus, we took the difficult decision to draw one of our educational blogs, FreelanceSwitch, to a close. Over the past six years, it had hosted hundreds of writers, and given advice to millions of dedicated readers pursuing a freelance career, and we were sad to see it go. But the majority of the articles live on in the Microlancer blog, and our new Tuts+ business topic (and we’ll be continuing to teach business and freelancing topics every day in this new section of our site).

What’s Coming in 2014?

The year just gone has been the start of this new chapter of Tuts+, and there’s no shortage of work to be done in the coming year. Here’s a quick summary of a few things you might expect to see.

• Everything in one place.
  We hope to complete our project to consolidate Tuts+ into a single, easy-to-browse site. We’ll continue to publish our free tutorials, offer our course subscription, and sell individual courses. But you’ll be able to access everything in a single place, and use your Tuts+ account for more than just your monthly course subscription!!
• Focus on learning paths, and guiding you through your education.
  Although we have several thousand tutorials across over a dozen different topics (and the ability to search these has improved a great deal this year!), we still have work to do in better illustrating how to work through all of these materials. We’ll be working on a project to map out different paths through our tutorial and course library, and ensure we’re covering all of our topic areas comprehensively.
• More focus on software training and business.
  We’ll be investing more time and attention into both business education, and broader software and application training. We’ve been delighted with the response to the Mac and OS X tutorials published in the past year, and we’ll be taking this to the next level in 2014 by also covering different platforms, and more business orientated software.
• Broader coverage of CMS platforms.
  Over the past few years, Wptuts+ has become a well-respected place to learn how to develop best practice WordPress themes and plugins, as well as understanding how everything works behind the scenes. Next year, we’ll be building on this by also covering related CMS platforms, eCommerce systems, and more.

In Conclusion

I’m incredibly proud of what our editorial and content teams have achieved over the past year. We’ve entered new topic areas, made big leaps forward, and adapted to new ways of working. 2014 is shaping up to be an equally exciting year of change and improvement, and we’ll be working hard to continue offering high-quality, timely educational resources on topics that you’ll love.