Show HN: Switch from Medium to your own blog • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Switch from Medium to your own blog

#11

Post by onion2k » Fri, May 31, 2019, 2:00 PM UTC

eugenhotaj wrote: post #7

I honestly don't get posts like these. IMHO the main selling point of Medium is not that you can easily set up a blog, there's plenty of platforms that let you do that easily, or great tools like OP's for setting up your own. The point is that there is already a large audience you can reach with your posts, and Medium actively works to distribute your posts to people who would be interested in them. The equivalent he…

The point is that there is already a large audience you can reach with your posts...

There was a large audience. Medium have introduced a paywall that you could dismiss with a click, but now they've started enforcing that paywall and stopping you reading more than a couple of articles a month. The audience who have chosen not to pay will fall away precipitously over the next few weeks to the point where people are going so see no traffic on their posts at all.

Authors need to choose to either support Medium or leave for a different platform now. The glut of 'how-to-leave-Medium' posts are a response to that.

Re: Show HN: Switch from Medium to your own blog

#12

Post by mathieudutour » Fri, May 31, 2019, 2:01 PM UTC

eugenhotaj wrote: post #7

I honestly don't get posts like these. IMHO the main selling point of Medium is not that you can easily set up a blog, there's plenty of platforms that let you do that easily, or great tools like OP's for setting up your own. The point is that there is already a large audience you can reach with your posts, and Medium actively works to distribute your posts to people who would be interested in them. The equivalent he…

Totally, but that's what syndication is all about. The best is to have the original content on your own blog and then to cross post it to Medium, with the canonical link linking back to your blog. That way, if/when Medium is replaced by another platform, you don't loose your content and your have already build some SEO for your blog.

Re: Show HN: Switch from Medium to your own blog

#13

Post by timvisee » Fri, May 31, 2019, 2:01 PM UTC

cosmic_quanta wrote: post #4

fareesh wrote: post #3

Great gif. This should be how everyone does readmes.

I've tried doing this screen-capture-to-gif thing before but it was always frustrating. I'd love to hear about the workflow to make a gif like this.

For terminal based things I've been using `asciinema`. There are various options to play/render such recordings, such as to an interactive SVG. SVGs are lot smaller than GIFs in file size, and are even scalable.

See one of my projects for example: https://github.com/timvisee/ffsend#ffsend-wip

Re: Show HN: Switch from Medium to your own blog

#14

Post by snazz » Fri, May 31, 2019, 2:03 PM UTC

fareesh wrote: post #3

Great gif. This should be how everyone does readmes.

I’m conflicted. When the video is so long that waiting for it to restart is painful, I think that an actual video with pause/play/seek controls is preferred. At the same time, it’s nice that it autoplays. For 100% text/CLI videos, I prefer Asciinema as it doesn’t involve downloading an 18MB GIF.

Re: Show HN: Switch from Medium to your own blog

#15

Post by mathieudutour » Fri, May 31, 2019, 2:05 PM UTC

snazz wrote: post #14

fareesh wrote: post #3

Great gif. This should be how everyone does readmes.

I’m conflicted. When the video is so long that waiting for it to restart is painful, I think that an actual video with pause/play/seek controls is preferred. At the same time, it’s nice that it autoplays. For 100% text/CLI videos, I prefer Asciinema as it doesn’t involve downloading an 18MB GIF.

Indeed, I'd love GitHub to support video embed in the readme, but having to go to another page to see the video is a bit of a no-no for me...

On twitter I did use a video instead of a gif: https://twitter.com/MathieuDutour/status/1134448154793914368

Re: Show HN: Switch from Medium to your own blog

#16

Post by detaro » Fri, May 31, 2019, 2:05 PM UTC

eugenhotaj wrote: post #7

I honestly don't get posts like these. IMHO the main selling point of Medium is not that you can easily set up a blog, there's plenty of platforms that let you do that easily, or great tools like OP's for setting up your own. The point is that there is already a large audience you can reach with your posts, and Medium actively works to distribute your posts to people who would be interested in them. The equivalent he…

The main selling point for Medium for a long time was "cool, minimalist blogging site without all the crap". Now they're not.

Re: Show HN: Switch from Medium to your own blog

#17

Post by detaro » Fri, May 31, 2019, 2:06 PM UTC

fiveoak wrote: post #9

Honestly I really appreciate tools like this exist but I'll probably keep using Medium out of laziness. I don't want to have to worry about maintaining my own blog and I'm cheap so I don't really want to pay for hosted Ghost/Wordpress since I'm not trying to make money off of my infrequent dumb blog posts. The cheapest Ghost plan is $29/mo :(

One of the benefits of static sites like those: They don't need continuous maintenance like e.g. WP would.

Re: Show HN: Switch from Medium to your own blog

#18

Post by snazz » Fri, May 31, 2019, 2:07 PM UTC

mathieudutour wrote: post #15

snazz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m conflicted. When the video is so long that waiting for it to restart is painful, I think that an actual video with pause/play/seek controls is preferred. At the same time, it’s nice that it autoplays. For 100% text/CLI videos, I prefer Asciinema as it doesn’t involve downloading an 18MB GIF.

Indeed, I'd love GitHub to support video embed in the readme, but having to go to another page to see the video is a bit of a no-no for me... On twitter I did use a video instead of a gif: https://twitter.com/MathieuDutour/status/1134448154793914368

Maybe a short GIF and a longer full video? I don’t know. This is all super off-topic anyway. I like the project very much.

Re: Show HN: Switch from Medium to your own blog

#19

Post by forrestthewoods » Fri, May 31, 2019, 2:07 PM UTC

eugenhotaj wrote: post #7

I honestly don't get posts like these. IMHO the main selling point of Medium is not that you can easily set up a blog, there's plenty of platforms that let you do that easily, or great tools like OP's for setting up your own. The point is that there is already a large audience you can reach with your posts, and Medium actively works to distribute your posts to people who would be interested in them. The equivalent he…

Medium does literally nothing to help the average blogger get views.

Their network is zero value. It might actually be negative value because Medium is now associated with shitty content.

Source: Have blog, left Medium for static hosting.

Re: Show HN: Switch from Medium to your own blog

#20

Post by kasbah » Fri, May 31, 2019, 2:07 PM UTC

eugenhotaj wrote: post #7

I honestly don't get posts like these. IMHO the main selling point of Medium is not that you can easily set up a blog, there's plenty of platforms that let you do that easily, or great tools like OP's for setting up your own. The point is that there is already a large audience you can reach with your posts, and Medium actively works to distribute your posts to people who would be interested in them. The equivalent he…

Audience or not, if I had started writing on Medium when it first came out then I'd be pretty pissed off with the way the site looks and behaves now with its sticky headers, popups and paywalls. I'd welcome a program like this to help me migrate my posts.