Frontend Horse

The brand has branched out to be more articles than newsletter in recent months, so I haven't been paying as much attention to newsletter growth.

After the rebrand, I got back to sending newsletters consistently and immediately picked up a few hundred followers.

I'm focusing on growing this as naturally as I can. I don't want to grow for the sake of the numbers, and so I'm not using a ton of tricks to get emails just yet. No lead magnets, modals, referrals, etc.

I might revisit that in the future, but right now I want to keep my high open and click rates.

When it started, I got Frontend Horse off the ground in just a week or two. This meant I had to make a ton of sacrifices around the overall design of the brand. I chose a color palette and made a super simple logo and started publishing.

I'm glad I did it that way. If I waited for the perfect brand to come along, I would have never launched.

This rebrand changed the brand fonts, colors, logo, image assets, and a lot more. It's much more in the look and feel of what I wanted the brand to be from the start. Warm, friendly, fun, and a bit over the top.

It got a very warm reception, but most important is I feel so much better about the brand as a whole.

The first issue is out! I feature 2 CodePens, a website, a resource, and a tutorial. I learned a bunch with each one and hopefully teach it well.

I wasn't originally planning to launch so soon, but people encouraged me to just get it out there, rather than wait until it's perfect to launch. It feels great to have it out there, and the feedback is great so far.

I've committed to sending every Thursday, so I just need to keep up with that schedule. That's the toughest part from here on out.

I wanted a newsletter that dug into the code for me and told me how CodePens and websites did those amazing effects. I figured I had to start it myself! After a few days of brainstorming, I came up with the name Frontend Horse. Mainly because I think .horse domain names are hilarious. Now I get to make horse puns and talk about web development! Win/win.

Now the work starts. I need to design the brand, code the website, and make the newsletter.