Now that we’re charging into 2014, it feels only befitting to stop and reflect on the year just gone, and look a little closer at our achievements. Sometimes we’re all too focused on delivering “things” and staying abreast in our respective fields to be able to recognise each other’s efforts, and the accomplishments we have been able to achieve as a team.
The Tuts+ library continues to expand yearly and it was only during the recent migration to the new Tuts+ design that the technical team started to truly appreciate the sheer volume of content that has been accumulated.
In the past six years we have published 17,817 posts contributed by a global collective of 2,699 authors across 13 topics (excluding Tuts+ Premium). These numbers are truly remarkable and the best part is that all this learning material is available to everyone for free! This article serves to recognise some of the efforts of the members of our team and community.
Note: All data in this article is representative of tutorials published on the Tuts+ Network over the course of 12 months, unless otherwise specified. Tuts+ Premium has been excluded from most analysis due to the different structure of posts (courses/lessons).
Traffic
How much do you know about the different topics in the Tuts+ network? Photoshop, web development, and vector have historically attracted the most visitors and make up 50% of the overall traffic of the network.
The amount of traffic is often directly related to how long the topic has been in existence. Photoshop and web development were the first two topics (on the original Psdtuts+ and Nettuts+ sites), building the foundation for the network.
Posts
In 2012 we launched three new topics (Mac computer skills, game development, and craft) which over the past year have grown to become equal contributors to the network. However, it is the lively and passionate vector team that contributed the most posts for the year.
Popular Posts in 2013
To widely and fairly acknowledge the efforts of all our instructors, we thought the best way to celebrate would be to determine the most popular post on the basis of the traffic it attracts in the first 30 days from publication date. I’ve taken the top post from each site and displayed them in comparison to each other.
Congratulations to all instructors above! A special mention goes to Johnny Winter (Mac Editor) who smashed it this year. Overall though it was the USA who brought home the bacon with a total of five top posts written by American authors.
Popular Posts on the New Tuts+
Josh Johnson managed to drag the Google juice with him from Phototuts+ (now the Photography topic) and clearly ranks as the most viewed article on the new Tuts+. What is really impressive however is the attention Psdtuts+ champion Martin Perhiniak received after posting an article on bad habits on the 29th October 2013 (allowing only three days of traffic data to be included in this review).
In a single day he managed to amass a staggering 18,912 views catapulting him into 2nd spot. His walkthrough of Photoshop CC which was published close to the initial launch of the Tuts+ redesign came in a close third.
- 100 Free Photoshop Actions (And How to Make Your Own) By Josh Johnson
- 10 Bad Habits to Break in Photoshop By Martin Perhiniak
- What’s New in Photoshop CC By Martin Perhiniak
Popular Posts in 2013 (All Time)
Actually, if we ignore the publication date and look across our entire catalogue, we see that some posts have risen through the Google ranks and attract some serious traffic.
| Rank | Country | Author | Site | Post | Pageviews | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. |  |
 |
Josh Johnson | Photography | 100 Free Photoshop Actions and How to Make Your Own | 1,178,787 |
| 2. | |
 |
Andrew Childress | Photography | 100 Free Lightroom Presets and How to Make Your Own | 698,151 |
| 3. | |
 |
Danny Outlaw | Photoshop | 50 Great Photoshop Tutorials for Clever Beginners | 517,969 |
Yep, you read right, 1 million views in a year!
If Tuts+ had the concept of Elite authors, similar to the Marketplaces, then the bunch I have mentioned above would surely be bestowed with that title. Awesome work guys!
Trivia Question
Who wrote the very first Tuts+ article? The answer is revealed at the bottom of this post!
Authors
Photoshop workhorse Martin Perhiniak had a sublime year, smashing out a massive 62 posts. He’s followed ever so closely by Apple fanboy Jordan Merrick with 61 posts. Tom McFarlin even put together a “lazy” 52, which means our three most prolific authors average more than one article per week!
A special mention goes to Lisa Tilse. What was meant to be a ‘Top Ten’ list was expanded ever so slightly to accommodate the highest contributing Aussie author. Good onya Lisa!
| Rank | Country | Author | Topic | Posts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. |  |
 |
Martin Perhiniak | Photoshop | 62 |
| 2. |  |
 |
Jordan Merrick | Mac Computer Skills | 61 |
| 3. | |
 |
Tom McFarlin | WordPress | 52 |
| 4. |  |
 |
Bart Jacobs | Mobile Development | 45 |
| 5. | |
 |
Mo Volans | Music & Audio | 38 |
| 6. |  |
 |
Jose Antunes | Photography | 38 |
| 7. | |
 |
Sue Smith | Mobile Development | 30 |
| 8. |  |
 |
Barış Ünver | WordPress | 27 |
| 9. | |
 |
Rachel Shillcock | Web Design | 27 |
| 10. | |
 |
Melody Nieves | Photoshop | 27 |
| 11. |  |
 |
Lisa Tilse | Crafts & DIY | 26 |
Comments
The move to Disqus, a hosted commenting service, saw a significant rise in the number of comments by members of the Tuts+ community—definitely a fantastic result! It indicates that our community have more to say in the way of either questions or feedback for our authors. There was however a decrease in the number of unique participants which is something that we should look at rectifying over the course of the new year.
It was raised by MJW that it was a possibility that this decrease could well be spam comments and since we moved to Disqus spam has been more readily detected and removed. Akistmet was the spam prevention tool used back in Wordpress land and has in the past been considered to be the best tool for the job. Some more research may be needed to determine whether this trend is indeed a concern.
- 84,574 total comments ↑ 21%
- 38,974 unique commenters ↓ 18%
Whilst Web Development continues to dominate overall discussions, it is positive to see some of the smaller topics such as Music & Audio, CG, Game Development and Craft have such widespread participation. In comparison, Vector, whilst the 3rd most active community, has a much smaller spread of unique contributors. Neither is good or bad—it does however provide insight and a better understanding of how each site’s respective community participate.
Most Active Community Members
| Rank | Country | Contributor | Topic | Comments | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. |  |
 |
Simona Dumitru | Photography | 131 |
| 2. |  |
 |
Sila Mahmud | Photoshop | 88 |
| 3. |  |
 |
Duc Su | Vector | 66 |
| 4. |  |
 |
Shamim cpz | Photoshop | 56 |
| 5. | |
 |
Daniel Thomassin | Vector | 32 |
Most Active Authors
| Rank | Country | Author | Topic | Comments | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | |
|
Adi Purdila | Web Design & WordPress | 218 |
| 2. | |
|
Bart Jacobs | Mobile | 130 |
| 3. | |
|
Tom McFarlin | WordPress | 102 |
Tom and Bart are now both editors (for the WordPress and Mobile Development topics respectively) which just goes to show you their ongoing dedication to education.
Most Active Editors
| Rank | Country | Editor | Topic | Comments | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | |
|
Sharon Milne | Vector | 319 |
| 2. | |
|
Ian Yates | Web Design | 305 |
| 3. | |
 
|
Johnny Winter | Mac Computer Skills | 202 |
In Conclusion
Congratulations to all our editors, instructors, and community members, for helping so many people learn on Tuts+. It’s been a big year!
Trivia Answer
So, who wrote the first tutorial published on Tuts+? Our resident wanderer of the internets, Collis Ta’eed!
When jelly text-effect styles took the web by storm in spring of 2007, Collis (who in those days went by the alias ‘thegoodness’) felt compelled to tell the world about them, but he needed a platform. Hence, Psdtuts+ was born.
In fact, Collis wrote the first 20 articles on Psdtuts+ before a mysterious fellow known only by the name Arik wrote the first commissioned articles (eight in total) before disappearing back into the wilderness whence he came.
O Arik, Arik, where art thou Arik?
