Smashing Magazine is the world’s best blog on web design and coding. In case you don’t have that site in your reading list yet, you should because it is “the” place to find Wallpapers, Icons, Photoshop tutorials, WordPress tricks, CSS and everything else that is connected with web development.
Vitaly Friedman, Sven Lennartz and other Smashing Magazine editors do an excellent job at finding some of the best resources on the web and they also routinely release their own freebies which include original WordPress themes, icons and even free fonts.
That said, Smashing Magazine is facing some sort of financial trouble probably because the revenue from web advertising is not enough to offset the input costs:
We must admit that the situation is quite complicated right now. We have recently moved to an office and we hired more people, and we invested more money and other resources into more profound, in-depth articles written by professionals and high-profile designers and developers.
Last year we have invested a lot in the Smashing Book and although the revenue was OK, the costs were huge and we had way too many unexpected costs and problems along the way. Finally, in February our traffic, server and external freelancing costs increased, together with many other things.
The site needs urgent funds to stay afloat but they are aren’t asking for donations.
They have created a 242 page PDF eBook that has a selection of their best articles on professional Web design – some of these articles are already on their website while others are exclusively written for the book. The PDF costs $9.90 and it is DRM free so you can print it or read it on just about any other computer or ebook reader.
Like loads of other people, I have benefited immensely from Smashing Magazine’s content and want them to stay around forever. I just bought a copy of their PDF ebook to say a quick “Thank You” and would appreciate if some of you reading this can support them as well.
Here are some sample pages from Smashing Magazine’s ebook: