Smashing Magazine we smash you with the information that will make your life easier. really.

8 Things You Should Know About Smashing Magazine

By Smashing Editorial, March 10th, 2007 in Events | 73 Comments | Forum

You probably expected a list, and in fact you’ll get one. Since there have been many misunderstandings going on about Smashing Magazine, we’d like to explain, why we do what we do and why we are doing it this way. Please spread the word if you’d like to support us, or don’t if you don’t want to support us.

Hm, what’s the problem?

Every now and again we get e-mails and comments, in which our readers accuse us of stealing information from Dr. Web Magazin. Some users consider us being a spam machine and bury us on Digg. Some bloggers write about us, trying to prove that we use some unfair methods to generate traffic from Digg. OK, we’ve heard you.

However, still literally thousands and thousands of people digg and bookmark our articles. Actually, it’s a nice gesture of appreciation, don’t you think?

So, what’s going on, guys?

Ok, let’s put it straight. Here are some facts you should know before writing/commenting/complaining about us. You can find more information in the About section .

All articles on Smashing are created/written/compiled by us,
Vitaly Friedman, Sven Lennartz or Christiane Rosenberger. In fact, it takes many hours of hard work to write the articles which are already published. All resources are hand-picked and selected manually. We want to achieve the highest quality content and present it to a broad audience.
We would never steal information.
We respect the work of other people and if we use their information, we’ll definitely refer and link to them. The reason many of our articles are that useful is because we respect the work of web-developers and respect the person who has created it.
We would never spam.
We don’ exploit Digg and thousands of other web-sites, using some spam-techniques in order to achieve the best positions in search engines, get to the front page or get mentioned in popular blogs. What we do is simply offering only useful content. Can we be blamed for thousands of people bookmarking and digging us, just because the information we present is indeed useful and is the quality content?
We respect you.
Whatever you say, write or comment about us - OK, let’s talk. We can make mistakes and we can improve the quality of our posts if you tell us what has gone wrong. We are always looking for conversations with our users. Join in!
Sven Lennartz is the chief-editor of Dr. Web.
Dr. Web is the German-speaking online-magazine for designers and web-developers. Vitaly Friedman writes for Dr. Web. DrWeb.de, the project Sven started 9 years ago, focuses on German-speaking audience (you can find his name at the bottom of every DrWeb page). Smashing Magazine, however, has not only further resources to offer, but it focuses on English-speaking audience. And yes, we have rewritten some of our articles in English and published them on Smashing Magazine to reach a broader audience. Actually, they’ve been published in English, so that you can find the information and use it for your projects.
Our aim is to help web-developers get the information they are actually looking for.
We want to make sure that the valuable information we have, collect, or stumble upon is available for people who might actually use it for their creative works. We put a lot of thinking in before posting every single article. We try to provide what we personally understand to be quality material. We present information which we ourselves would like to bookmark once it appears online. Ironically, if we are looking for something in the Web, we go to Smashing magazine ourselves, because it’s handy to keep all the useful stuff in one place.
You define what you read on Smashing Magazine.
We appreciate your input and select the topics we write about according to the stats we get about your activity, the popularity of our articles and feedbacks we receive. We appreciate every constructive e-mail you send to us and try to answer e-mails immediately. Please let us know what is interesting for you, digging or not digging, bookmarking or not bookmarking us.
We are looking for co-authors and co-bloggers. If you can offer quality material in English, we are also willing to work with you, pay you and present your articles to a broad audience. Let’s talk!

This is why we are doing this.

And this is why we are doing it this way.

Digg or Bury us as you wish, but please, be objective and appreciate at least the time we invest in collecting information we present. All right?

Published in Events, March 10th, 2007
Tags: smashing

1.

Olivia (March 10th, 2007, 8:27 pm)

oooh. i like you :)
2.

Marcel (March 10th, 2007, 8:42 pm)

I appreciate it very much that you are doing this: this is my favourite website, a smashing magazine!

Thank you!
3.

AL (March 10th, 2007, 9:05 pm)

Guys keep doing what you’re doing best and forget about ‘em. Your stuff is so useful I personally bookmark pretty much every smashing article you publish.

Rock on!
4.

Mac (March 10th, 2007, 9:07 pm)

people who digg n bury you are just jealous :P
you do good jobs, don’t stop !!!

i’m glad 2 have a site like this in my bookmarks :-D

using it really often - some more color threads’d be fine
5.

Carlos Eduardo (March 10th, 2007, 9:08 pm)

Yeah, I think you have to keep doing these posts that help us too much!

I love this site and I think you’re not stealing anything.

Thank you for this site :)
6.

Aaron Berning (March 10th, 2007, 9:11 pm)

I usually don’t comment. I will say however that I think you guys are doing a great job. I love that I can check one page/feed and know that I’ll get good content that will inspire me or expand my knowledge or help me in my day to day. Keep it up.
7.

Zek (March 10th, 2007, 9:39 pm)

Every success creates obviously jealousy.
Keep the intelligent critics, and don’t listen to the others. Smashing magazine is a huge and useful service for us, webdeveloppers.
8.

gr8pixel (March 10th, 2007, 9:48 pm)

keep up the good work…
cheers!!!
;)
9.

Christophe (March 10th, 2007, 10:11 pm)

Do not change nothing. You are the best website / blog in my Bookmarks !

Christophe, from Switzerland
10.

David (March 10th, 2007, 10:48 pm)

Keep up the good work! I really apreciate what you guys are doing here for the web design community. You can either read this blog.. or spend hours reading 20 more to get the same content. And you manage to keep it simple!

Thank you! really, keep it up! Cheers from Argentina.
11.

Fabien Mannessier (March 10th, 2007, 11:18 pm)

Your post remembers me the young times of Ruby on Rails. Lots of envy of people who cannot afford they cannot imagine, develop the same.

It also remembers me when I developed a succesful site back in 2000 and got that sort of comments. The bad conclusion I took and now regret to have taken is to abandon the project and dedicate myself to other ones. Do not commit the same error. That’s a fact of life: you get people who like very much your work and people who do not know anything else than critizice and do not produce anything useful. Listen to first group and ignore the last. That’s my advice.

Of course, I belong to the first group. I really love your work. Any times I receive a post through RSS, the first thing I do is click and read all your articles long. Go on. You’ve got a mark you have success.
12.

Jari T (March 10th, 2007, 11:19 pm)

Aw, forgettaboutit…

You provide a great resource for web designers. In a clean, uncluttered form, too.

Thank you!

j.
13.

Connie (March 10th, 2007, 11:53 pm)

I also thought there was something strange going on, but just the other way round: I thought drweb.de was “taking content” from smashing magazine.

I think these misunderstandings were produced by you yourselves: because you did not inform about that at drweb.de (you pretended that smashingmagazine.com is just another goog website, but you did not made clear that it is your website!)

and what is the effect? I just ignore drweb.de now, because the content here is more actual and the layout is much more fluffy… where drweb.de is really awful old layout….

so Leute, jetzt hab ich’s Euch aber gegeben ;=)
14.

serene (March 11th, 2007, 12:29 am)

nice…..
15.

David Airey (March 11th, 2007, 12:55 am)

First comment from me.

It’s difficult to forget about ugly comments or criticism, but as you can see from the comments so far there are many more lovers than haters for this site.

Keep doing what you do.

David from Creative Design ::
16.

webthese (March 11th, 2007, 1:35 am)

You are doing good jobs! I like this site and I’m reading your articles again n again. As well I’m announcing your many articles on my site.

I’m repeat; don’t stop and don’t leave write.

Thanks…
17.

Liz (March 11th, 2007, 2:33 am)

I LOVE your site, it’s def one of my new favorites, and that’s saying a lot as I’ve been bored with design blogs lately. Keep up the awesome work.
18.

Draven (March 11th, 2007, 4:23 am)

You guys rawk! I visit almost daily in anticipation of new articles. Please keep up the great work.
19.

JP (March 11th, 2007, 4:34 am)

I absolutely LOVE this site, I’ve referred this site to many friends and co-workers that do web design and graphics on the side, and they agree w/ me that your site is amazing and VERY informative…so for people to ‘bury’ you guys is a shame.

I am also glad I stumbled onto this site (found via digg.com), and I even have it on my bookmarks toolbar!

So keep up the good work!!
20.

Nelson Martínez (March 11th, 2007, 4:36 am)

Keep on rocking!!!!

I think that there is a lot of content and pages on the web for everyone, so if those ppl dont like your work, what they have to do is.. press ALT+F4 on their browser and puf! is done!! no more smashing for u !!!

Now seriously, This site is a great source of news and reference for a tons of users in the web, so feel proud of what u are doing and keep on!!!

Nelson Martínez
From Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
21.

Alex Zfx (March 11th, 2007, 4:57 am)

Always precise and up to the point. Real nice job you are doing. I usually read your rss line and don’t leave comments. Many thanks for your work. Keep it up!
22.

Robert Tipping (March 11th, 2007, 6:19 am)

This is easily one of the best sites on the web.
23.

John Faulds (March 11th, 2007, 7:55 am)

You could probably avoid a lot of the confusion if you added a note/disclaimer along the lines of:
“The article is an English translation of the article that appears on our other site DrWeb.de.”
24.

Barry McGee (March 11th, 2007, 8:06 am)

I love this site, my fav RSS feed!
25.

Mohamad (March 11th, 2007, 10:17 am)

i really like your site,its my favorite, keep going, thank you all.
26.

Mike B (March 11th, 2007, 2:53 pm)

I have enjoyed this site, I try and check it everyday. It gives me information, inspiration, and helps me keep up in the media world. I have learned a lot also. Thanks for your hard work. RSS Love
27.

criticalerror (March 11th, 2007, 3:48 pm)

Keep going!!
You’re the great!

;)
28.

toobs (March 11th, 2007, 6:37 pm)

Some ppl are just plain Jealous! You guys are SMMAASSHING!
29.

Avinash (March 11th, 2007, 8:21 pm)

I don’t know why people become so jealous seeing someone else going ahead.

In my opinion, you guys are doing a great job. Each and every Smashing Magazine article boost my knowledge like a rocket!

Thanks a lot for whatever you are doing!

- Avi
30.

Chaaban (March 11th, 2007, 9:42 pm)

Good Luck guys , keep it up !

you can never have all people on your side .

A lot of cool info here ;)

Thank’s for compiling them .
31.

Peter (March 11th, 2007, 10:09 pm)

You guys are the greatest. You keep on posting this great resources en info. You are a big contribution to the graphic industry.
32.

Jake (March 12th, 2007, 12:52 am)

I work for a advertising firm, and the majority of our designers/flash/programmers love your site. I personally have an RSS feed on my google homepage.

Keep doing what you’re doing.
33.

JackBlack (March 12th, 2007, 2:18 am)

This is one of the sites I’m visiting daily, very hi-quality stuff keep up the good work and thanks!
34.

Damian (March 12th, 2007, 3:04 am)

Keep doing what you’ve been doing. I love the articles and by the looks of these comments so do the majority of others. You’re always a good read.

Thanks,

D.
35.

O.G (March 12th, 2007, 4:54 am)

Ignore those that just point fingers.

You guys provide quality, concise, usable info.
Thank you for spending your time to share this valuable
info.

Web 2.0 is all about sharing, right?

Kopf hoch, und vielen Dank nochmal :)

O.G
36.

Leandro Correa (March 12th, 2007, 6:18 am)

Don’t stop!

Brazilian fan here.
37.

Shaine (March 12th, 2007, 7:42 am)

You guys are doing a fantastic job. You publish awesome material in far more volume than I could possibly hope to keep track of, ensuring that there is never an end to inspiration, examples, and tutorials. Thanks!
38.

Delmar (March 12th, 2007, 8:02 am)

I am a graphic designer and I love your smashing magazine. It is a great source of inspiration for me. Please! guys do not pay attention to the trash talking bloggers. keep doing your site like the way you do. It is a pleasure to read your information. Thanks
39.

Maurizio (March 12th, 2007, 4:21 pm)

Keep up the good work! You are a great source of quality information presented in a clear and unclettered way.
Thanks.
40.

Rameshan (March 12th, 2007, 6:33 pm)

Smashing Magazine is one of my favourite site which helped me a lot to work in web development industry..

I appreciate and thank you for helping all the web designers with new technolofy/ developements in the industry

Thank you
41.

daysleeper (March 12th, 2007, 6:43 pm)

you’re so great! i’m looking forward to get new usefull information!
42.

Al (March 12th, 2007, 7:40 pm)

Don’t let any negative people deter you, keep doing what you’re doing.

You site publishes quality articles, keep up the good work. :)
43.

theo (March 13th, 2007, 3:42 am)

You do more research and more investigation than almost anybody else and then package your reports in a clear, clean, concise format. No wonder people are jealous!
44.

Haungo (March 13th, 2007, 5:51 am)

Word UP!
45.

Darren (March 13th, 2007, 5:53 am)

Thanks for all the great work guys, Ignore them, we all love you !!!
46.

Keith Donegan (March 13th, 2007, 8:58 am)

Guys, you are doing a great job with this website. All the info is complied very logically and there is alot of good content that I would have missed if it wasn’t for this site…

All the best
47.

Kiran (March 13th, 2007, 11:13 am)

awww…come on, please don’t be like that. Envious and jealous and sometimes a little deranged(these are the kind you get on the net nowadays) people do that kind of things.
You see, smashing magazine is one of my fav sites for design and information and i check it out regularly every hour.And i believe there are many who are like me, please carry on the good work. Everything good follows.
48.

Jermayn Parker (March 13th, 2007, 12:31 pm)

Yeah dont stop peoples :)

I personally dont look at every link and post (due to time restraints) but I do enjoy your posts and it does get the old brain into gear on dead days.

Please keep it up and thanks for the website
49.

Brian (March 13th, 2007, 2:09 pm)

I read english, and Drweb.de is not in english! I love this magazine!
50.

Michelle (March 13th, 2007, 2:15 pm)

Seriously, i love this site so much. I’m creating my first Web site with very little training before hand because you inspire me to do interesting, creative things. Screw the haters; Smashing Mag. is freaking great. I heart you.
51.

Jurjen Ladenius (March 13th, 2007, 4:08 pm)

Keep up the good work! Go tell them they’re wrong!
52.

Roland (March 13th, 2007, 5:32 pm)

Hey, keep up the good work. smashingmagazine is one of the best ressources for webdevelopers i know so far. some people are just always jealous.
53.

Roland (March 13th, 2007, 5:34 pm)

Hey, keep up the excellent work you are doing with smashingmagazine. it is one of the best ressources of webdevelopers i know so far. some people are just always jealous.
54.

jennessa (March 13th, 2007, 6:59 pm)

Keep going. I started to study in web design and your website is very useful for beginner like me.
55.

Ramil (March 13th, 2007, 9:55 pm)

Good luck and keep them coming up. Very good web resources, lots of information here.
56.

Tim (March 14th, 2007, 5:27 am)

I’m glad that you have cleared this up for many of us, since I know I’ve seen some of your content before I’ve seen it here (apparently always at Dr. Web) and based upon your design (or lack therof) I had assumed this was a splog inteded for adwords revenue or some sort of SEO trickery. It might help if it was clearer who and what you were right at the top. When people see those huge google text ads and no strong identity they start the splog filter, I think you should really work on straightening out your design and identity first, that would help many people who (sub-consciously) ignore your content as beeing repeated or stolen.
57.

Fausto Pacheco (March 14th, 2007, 6:30 pm)

Hi, in the coutry there is a saying,

“a galinha do viziho é sempre melhor que a minha” (this is portuguese).

Congratulations SM, you are great.
58.

balachandar (March 15th, 2007, 4:17 am)

Everyday i start assuming that ‘today is going to be a smashing day - I’m gonna have a new set of posts in smashing magazine’. The inspiration adrenaline that you pump in our creative minds are huge.
My Top ranked site for creative Inspiration is this website. Waiting for the new identity / new look.
Jus REBORN! Keep it up! we love you for whatever you are giving us.
59.

Gordonus (March 17th, 2007, 12:52 pm)

Lot’s of fresh, helpful and inspiring posts. I’ve never seen such large collections of design work that is of such a high standard. It’s no doubt you spend a good deal of time collecting this material.
Your efforts are as inspirational as the designs in your posts.

Have you thought of providing some comments on the work you select and why you selected it over others? What about ranking the designs, themes, fonts, etc. It would be interesting to hear what you had to say about a few of the many items in your posts.

Regardless, it’s great to have the smashers around. A fabulous resource of designs I would have otherwise missed.

Ever since your first few posts I have not been able to look away!
60.

Arun (March 18th, 2007, 9:27 pm)

Hope you dont take those stupid accusations seriously…Whatever good things you do, you are bound to get these..Maybe out of jealousy? Keep up the excellent work you are doing. You are doing great service to people like me…No words to thank you enough.
-arun
61.

David (March 29th, 2007, 5:21 pm)

You know, I must’ve found you guys a while back, but didn’t really start plugging in until a few months ago. This site is super useful and you guys are doing a fantastic job. Keep it up and screw the dirtbag comments who criticize out of envy.

Remember this. A statue/monument, has only been built for those that have been criticized, never for the ones who do the criticizing.

Cheers!
62.

Quakeulf (March 30th, 2007, 8:02 pm)

I first saw this site through a news article on Stylegala.com about the 45 fresh designs article. Then came another article from you over there, and I had to see what it was.

Now I’m totally hooked. :p
63.

Ankit (April 3rd, 2007, 8:04 pm)

You guys are doing a terrific job. SmashimgMagazine is now a must read blog for all Web Design enthusiasts. Stop worrying about the losers taking mud shots at you.

These people will continue their complaining since this is the only thing they are able to do and find real pleasure in it. So stop paying attention to them, and continue your job.

And remember one thing Digg runs because of sites and articles like yours, so actually its Digg who need more of your articles rather than you needing Digg traffic/mob.
64.

Joram Oudenaarde (April 13th, 2007, 5:13 pm)

I usually don’t comment on posts like this, but I think that the people who commented/mailed to blame you guys of spamming and stealing information should do some proper research before they start shouting.

This site has some excellent information, examples and links that helps both professional websavvy’s and people who simple like “pwetty pictures”. Loads of good links and examples of logo’s, typography, Wordpress themes… the list goes on and on. It’s like the counterpart of the CSS-galleries; an information-gallery.

Personally I think that you shouldn’t even feel the need to explain your actions. But I do hope that everyone that felt that you guys were “stealing/spamming” woke up and start sniffing the paradise of the World Wide Web :)

Keep up the good work ^^
65.

lamb (May 10th, 2007, 11:17 am)

good!
I like it!
66.

andrew (January 16th, 2008, 1:20 pm)

thanks. i love you. great publication.
67.

Kristian (January 26th, 2008, 9:31 am)

Wuaw! Im amazed.
Its the first time ive seen this type of explanation and what a great publication.
I always enjoy reading all of your post and the “magazine” always gives me great inspiration when im working.
I personally think youre doing a great job.
Greetings!