Why Rebrand? The Backstory of raywenderlich.com

– By Ray Wenderlich, Founder

This post is one in a series about our rebrand; read them all here:

Introducing Kodeco — the New raywenderlich.com
Why Rebrand? The Backstory of raywenderlich.com – (you are here)
To Infinity and Far, Far Beyond
319 Days to Building a New Brand

You’ve probably noticed that raywenderlich.com has made a huge change: We have a new look, and a new name!

Welcome to Kodeco: the new raywenderlich.com!

While the site might look a bit different, don’t worry: you’ll still have access to the same great material you’ve always enjoyed with your membership. But you may be wondering:

• Why is raywenderlich.com rebranding?
• Why are we doing this now?
• Why did we choose the name Kodeco?
• What’s new, and what’s changing?

Let’s dive in!

Why Is raywenderlich.com Rebranding?

About 10 years ago, I quit my job to become an indie app developer. As I was making apps, I started my own personal blog to share things I was learning along the way.

But over the years, the site grew far larger than one person’s personal blog. Now, I am a small part of an amazing group of over 300 talented developers from around the world who team up to help the community learn and become experts in mobile development.

Back when I first created raywenderlich.com, I never imagined that the site would transform from my personal blog into the community resource that it is today. If I had known, I never would have named the site raywenderlich.com. Instead, I would have picked a name that better represented all of us.

In fact, I strongly considered rebranding the site as early as seven years ago, and purchased several different domain names such as tutorialteam.com, rwtutorials.com, and so on. However, the timing just wasn’t right; there’s a huge amount of work that goes into a rebrand, and our team was simply too small to handle it.

Why Are We Doing this Now?

But now things are different! Since I first considered rebranding the site, our team has grown considerably:

• A Growing Team: We now have over 300 authors, editors and leaders at raywenderlich.com, including a full-time staff of 25 people.
• A Growing Library: Our library now includes over 5,000 videos, 2,000 articles and 40 books on mobile development.
• A Growing Scope: We’re not simply an iOS site anymore: We now cover all aspects of mobile development, including Android, Flutter, Server-Side Swift, Unity and more!

We’re now at the stage where we absolutely need a new brand that better reflects the reality of what we are as a team and as a site. We need a brand that makes it clear:

• We’re not a single person’s blog anymore; we’re a community of developers who love to learn and share our knowledge with the world.
• We’re not a tiny little site anymore; we’re a world-class educational platform and community.
• We’re not only an iOS site anymore; we now cover all aspects of mobile development, and we’ll cover even more subjects in the future!

In other words, raywenderlich.com has leveled up! I like to think of it similar to getting a prestige class in D&D. :]

Why Did We Choose the Name Kodeco?

We considered hundreds of different name possibilities for the new brand, and the one that came up on top was Kodeco (sounds like co-DECK-ko).

What we love about this name is that it combines the idea of “code” and “echo”. Our team specializes in creating high-quality mobile development tutorials, where our experts show you how to write code, and readers then “echo” in their footsteps.

Even more, after following our tutorials, readers often end up with careers in mobile development and become experts themselves. They then start to share, or “echo” their knowledge, by giving talks at meetups or conferences, mentoring junior developers or by joining our tutorial team, teaching and inspiring the next generation of developers.

In other words, this site is all about teaching in a style where readers “echo” what we do, and the lessons we teach also “echo” through other developers, who pay it forward across future generations.

Another reason we like Kodeco: It’s a whole lot easier to spell and type than raywenderlich.com! :]

What’s New, What’s Changing, and What’s Staying the Same?

Really, the only thing that has changed is the name and the site’s appearance. Everything else is the same. It’s like growing up: If your family moves to a new house, the address changes and the house itself looks new, but everything inside quickly looks like home again. We’re still the same bootstrapped company we were before. We still have the same internal team in place. We still believe in the same values and have the same ethos that we’ve always had.

And our content contributors? They’re still all here, too! Instead of being known as the raywenderlich.com Tutorial Team, they’re now proudly known as Team Kodeco. All of your favorite authors and instructors are still here to help you skill up and grow your future as a developer. All the content that you had access to before, you have access to now… along with many new things we’re cooking up!

We’re incredibly excited about this next chapter of our development, and can’t wait for you to join us on the journey!