Envato, the ever-interesting network run by Collis and Cyan Ta’eed, has revamped their TUTS websites. NETTUTS, PSDTUTS, and their kin are now housed under the name of “Tuts+,” with a central website at Tutsplus.com. They’re the same sites, but more tightly-knit.
Today across the Tuts+ network we’re rolling out some changes to our brand and how our sites work together. These changes include a rebrand of our logos, a shift from multiple domain names to a single top level domain, a universal Plus membership, a Plus Affiliate Program, updated Plus interface, a Twitter Tuts+ news stream and a new tutsplus.com site complete with a rearrangeable dashboard. In other words, a whole bunch of stuff!
You can read the full announcement here, with all of the big changes they’ve been making.
Overall the changes seem pretty good. I’ve always been a fan of the Ta’eed’s sites, the TUTS ones especially. However, a couple of the changes bug me a little…
- The new logos and naming scheme don’t seem quite right. Net.tuts+ just seems kind of awkward. It doesn’t read as well as NETTUTS. I’ve always wondered whether I should say “Net tutts” or “Net toots,” but now I have to say “Net tutts plus,” and write it with that awkward period and plus sign.
- The move to subdomains of tutsplus.com seems silly. You have the domains, they’re well established, they’re easier to type why change them? They may still get you there, but you’re jsut dilluting your existing brand. There’s already Tuts+ and Envato branding plastered all over the TUTS (sorry, “Tuts+”) sites. I can see not wanting to drop thousands of dollars for new *tuts.com domains, but it seems silly to change the other ones as well. I think it would be better to make the subdomains be the secondary, redirect URL for the sites that have their own domains.
I can understand the changes, but those two just don’t sit well with me… I suppose I will get used to them in time.
