$35,000,000 WordPress Theme

It's National Gourmet Coffee Day!

Yes, that's also a thing. Who doesn't love a little celebration and coffee? ☕️

So, raise your cup today and take a moment to appreciate that familiar rich and delicious taste. On the same note, we share some of Gertrude Stein's smooth thoughts on coffee that percolated with us: "Coffee is a lot more than just a drink; it's something happening. Not as in hip, but like an event, a place to be, but not like a location, but like somewhere within yourself. It gives you time, but not actual hours or minutes, but a chance to be, like be yourself, and have a second cup."

While we're on the subject of celebrations, we'd like to welcome Susan to the Hey Rebekah team. Aside from firing up newsletters, she also teaches copywriting on a volunteer basis.

It was her first day yesterday and she's already given us some pointers on things we could improve. We knew we'd learn a lot, we just didn't expect the classes to begin on day one. 😅 Props to you and welcome! We're super excited that you're making us better.

Take a second to give a warm shout out to Susan in your reply to this message. We'll make sure she gets every one.

Yesterday, we talked about CNET's recent experiments using generative AI. Well, it turns out that our concern for quality and accuracy was well-founded.

Our friends at Futurism decided to dive in deep to analyze all of the writing. They found the content written by the yet unspecified AI to be riddled with errors and in some cases—absolutely wrong. 🫠

Futurism throws them a lot of shade:

The moral of the story is—for now—consider using generative AI to help you gain efficiencies. Like brainstorming or outlining.

Although, there are some things that ChatGPT gets right. Here's what they had to say on the subject:

🤖 The gist by ChatGPT: Humans should not depend on AI to write content yet because, let's be real, AI is still figuring out the difference between "there" and "their" and "they're." So, if you want to avoid embarrassing mistakes and confusing your readers, it's best to stick with human writers for now. Plus, AI-generated content may be able to mimic human writing, but it will never be able to match the wit, humor and charm that only a human writer can bring. So, let's give AI some more time to learn the difference between "its" and "it's" before we let it take over the writing world.

We're feeling nostalgic today and remembered this gem of a viral stunt by the folks at 3M. Back in 2005, they encased what appeared to be $3 million at a bus stop in Vancouver protected by their security film.

The challenge? Break the glass with a body part of your choosing and the money was yours. It was later revealed that there was only about $500 of real money in the display. But that didn't stop would be Chuck Norrises from spending a week or so kiai'ing at the glass.

This story is another oldie-but-a-goodie. Actually, it's one that keeps getting better every time we revisit it. But first, let's talk about that video? Great production, amazing content.

Checked all the boxes for us and hits close to home for some of our team.

Alright, let's dive into this fascinating story about how a fledgling web developer from Lahore built his dream house.

Muhammad Haris Zulfiqar is a Pakistani developer who now lives in Dubai. Haris had an affinity for technology fueled by his passion for gaming. To many a mother's dismay, he hung out a lot at local gaming centers playing Counter Strike.

Of course, what would gaming be without the ability to roast your buddies? Haris joined a gaming forum to communicate and collaborate with his fellow strikers. It was there that he noticed that it had a section for design. He decided to learn how to create in-demand forum signatures that made your profile look cool. He made one for himself and a few for friends.

Creating spurred his desire for more. Haris always wanted to build a website to "show his friends and impress his teachers". So that's exactly what he did.

After a few tries, he found a way to monetize one of them for $100 with AdSense. That was a pivotal moment in his career. It gave him the validation he needed to overcome his family's apprehensions about the time he spent at his computer.

He was introduced to WordPress by a theme creator he was working with and fell in love. Haris refined his development chops working with various theme developers then decided to create his own.

At first, it didn't go as planned. His submission was rejected more than 10x by ThemeForest and he was devastated. He almost gave up, but then put his head down and kept going. We're glad he did!

Instead of a freelancing platform, Haris took the bold step of establishing direct contacts with design agencies. It's an approach that eventually paid off, big time.

Haris went on to connect with Luke Beck, a designer from Florida. Luke had some success selling his WordPress themes on Envato and was interested in finding a reliable development partner.

They launched a couple of themes together with mixed results. Then, they went back to the drawing board to shake things up. Although their themes would ultimately benefit the companies' whose sites were published, they realized that the people building the sites were at the nucleus of their future.

Understanding this underserved market with unmet needs provided them with laser focus to create a killer product. One that was optimized to the way WordPress developers and users worked. Their product provided greater versatility, improved usability, and infinite extensibility.

Luke and Haris launched Avada. It's the top selling premium WordPress theme on the planet. With almost 866,000 sales, it's estimated that Avada powers over 4% of the internet's websites. What a mind blowing achievement!

Let's look at some of their key milestones:

WOW! Hats off to Haris, Luke, and the entire team at ThemeFusion. This is one of those unbelievable stories that makes us say:

See mom, a lotta good can come from gaming!

In 2012, Tinder—amongst other things—revolutionized mobile UX with its swiping and delightfully simple interface. A decade later, the mobile-first dating platform has grown into a technological behemoth with native apps for iOS and Android plus a robust web app.

It goes without saying that it's probably hard to maintain. So, the smart people at Tinder did something about it. They created a design system called Obsidian and are sharing their learning journey with us.

It's an exploration of the entire process written by members of their technical team. Take a look and write back to tell us what your favorite token is.

This section was inspired by one of our heroes, Alex Lieberman. He spent countless hours of time showing us the ropes on how to become a newsletter rockstar with the prodigious people at Beehiiv.