Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Switch from Medium to your own blog

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 134 posts

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

#81

Post by hackerpacker »

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…

some of don't really care who reads it, just that it is available. This gaming of everything is not necessarily a good thing. Is your article about programming or something, or is it about attention whoring?

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

#82

Post by TrueDuality »

ryanisnan wrote: post #80
mathieudutour wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is true yes, that's why the generated blog have a canonical link to medium so that the SEO isn't impacted. So you won't get any SEO for the articles that have been created on Medium but if you create one on your blog first and then import it on Medium (using the import tool, not copy pasting the content), Medium will be nice and put a canonical link pointing to your blog. Unfortunately, it's not possible to set a…

I don't believe your blog would get any improved SEO benefit from having canonical links to Medium - IIRC, Medium would get the juice. Furthermore, I don't know how Google handles cross-domain canonical reporting, but if I were writing a search engine, I would treat it as highly suspect.

You've got it backwards. There will be a header in the Medium post saying "the original source for this content is on this other blog, I'm just a repost". Google does pay attention to that and ranks the canonical source higher.

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

#84

Post by tyingq »

rat9988 wrote: post #74
tyingq wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cloudflare recently posted about competing with GitHub. Maybe this is a better place to compete if they are hell bent on going wide vs deep? Medium, for me, is a weird shit show. There are people there I want to read, but I dislike the "medium". For a variety of valid reasons, ranging from page weight bloat, to killing the custom domain feature, and finally...to paywall experiments. I do recognize their strength in v…

Cloudflare isn't trying to compete with github, You have misread the news.

Not making that up, or paraphrasing from 3rd parties, from the Cloudflare CTO:

"If we do, what features would you like?" - Cloudflare CTO

https://twitter.com/jgrahamc/status/1134092076382064640

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

#85

Post by TrueDuality »

hackerpacker wrote: post #81
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…

some of don't really care who reads it, just that it is available. This gaming of everything is not necessarily a good thing. Is your article about programming or something, or is it about attention whoring?

Personally I'm not gaming my sites for personal attention so much as I'd like people that do stumble on my content to have a positive experience. A lot of SEO metrics do reflect a user's experience.

Is it fast? Am I writing well enough that people can follow my instructions, debates, etc? Did I have a hard time finding information or additional sources on a problem?

Things like canonical links are personally important to me for other reasons. I do use the analytics of my blog for personal improvement. If people are bouncing off a page after getting there with relevant search terms maybe that post needs to be re-written or my assumptions were wrong.

Ultimately though, if you're writing a blog and posting it on the internet rather than just keeping a personal journal at some point you've got to be expecting to get something out of that. I don't think you have to jump to "attention whoring" as a motive though.

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

#86

Post by stevewodil »

mritchie712 wrote: post #55
phantom_oracle wrote: post #48

The cycle of these SV companies is interesting. They start off with a bang and become "darlings" in the initial stages, then they reach mass-market appeal, attempt to monetize (some of them do so in the most unethical ways) and start to become loathed by the very people who touted them in the beginning. Let's compile a list: - Facebook - Twitter - LinkedIn - Quora - Medium (You can add to it to see how far we go)

Does anyone really loathe LinkedIn? My inbox always has some spam, but it's by far the best way to get a quick summary of most peoples professional experience.

Yes.

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

#87

Post by andr »

I hope that everyone uses this. If I was Netlify, I'd pay Mathieu to develop this further (e.g. web UI for people not handy with CLI). What broke Medium for me was their paywall, paid subscriptions, and all that crap. Suddenly, instead of Medium facilitating an author's work reaching readers, it became an impediment in its way.

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

#88

Post by oblib »

onion2k wrote: post #11
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 go…

I used Medium a few times, but just never felt comfortable providing them with my content.

It's been so long now that I had no idea they'd put up a paywall. Make me feel like I had it right from the git go now.

Aside from that... this sounds like it's got to be close to the dumbest thing they could've done. It's akin to slapping your audience in the face every time they show up.

I hardly ever click on anything from WaPo or the NY Times. I have no problem with them charging for their content, they both do some great work, I just cannot pay for it and it's frustrating to run into their paywall.

Thanks for pointing this out. I'd still have been clueless about this had you not.

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

#89

Post by ajkjk »

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…

I often feel like the tech industry has a huge blind spot around "not doing things that make people hate you", and that conversations around tech tend not to factor "hate" (or 'resentment' if you prefer) into making things appealing.

For example I mostly hate Facebook for the choices they have made for years, and if I was ever going to stop hating them it would be after many years of sacrificial demonstration that they have a new philosophy in mind. Not unlike what it would take for a scumbag person to reverse my opinion of them -- candor and sacrifice, rather than nice words and promises.

It is not entirely impossible to stop being hated. Microsoft is occasionally managing it with VSCode and TypeScript, although I'd say I still 98% hate them; they have a lot to make up for, and Windows is still miserable garbage.

It is easy to become hated. Google is pulling it off remarkably. Making money is often easier if you do things people hate, although it's a short-term view -- it definitely increases short-term profitability and guarantees that in 20 years everyone will hate you and avoid you. But it's definitely economically rational for the company's employees, with their 2-10 year tenures and the metrics they have to hit.

Medium started as a breath of fresh air, and has become hated by being annoying. The point of switching from Medium is to screw over Medium, benefits be damned. If you're not factoring resentment into your utility calculation, of course this action won't make sense.

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

#90

Post by djflutt3rshy »

drngdds wrote: post #76
phantom_oracle wrote: post #48

The cycle of these SV companies is interesting. They start off with a bang and become "darlings" in the initial stages, then they reach mass-market appeal, attempt to monetize (some of them do so in the most unethical ways) and start to become loathed by the very people who touted them in the beginning. Let's compile a list: - Facebook - Twitter - LinkedIn - Quora - Medium (You can add to it to see how far we go)

It's hard to actually make money as a free service on the internet without being evil and/or really annoying

Yes, it'd be easier to compile a list of large free Internet services that aren't evil or annoying.

1. Wikipedia

2. Hacker News

3. Stack Exchange

4. Github and Gitlab

Post reply on HN