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Why I left Medium and moved back to my own domain

arslan.io

31–40 of 250 posts

Re: Why I left Medium and moved back to my own domain

#31
post #22
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN really need to add Matthew Butterick's sites to spamlist.

Why so? I just skimmed read the linked page (after pasting the URL manually...) and it doesn't seem any worse than other articles posted here.

Because if you follow the link you get http://practicaltypography.com/graylist.html. That page has about the same amount of content as a typical spam page.

Re: Why I left Medium and moved back to my own domain

#32
post #6

I don't understand why people write programming blogs on Medium. I think that managing a live website with its own server (rather than only working on other people's projects) is a very important skill. If you don't want to manage WordPress, try a static site generator like Metalsmith: https://github.com/segmentio/metalsmith Deploy on Digital Ocean or Linode for $5/month. Free hosting options include Github Pages and…

> I don't understand why people write programming blogs on Medium. I think that managing a live website with its own server (rather than only working on other people's projects) is a very important skill.

You've listed two different objectives: writing a programming blog, and learning to manage a live website. Why should anyone interested in the first automatically care about the second?

Re: Why I left Medium and moved back to my own domain

#34
post #19

Using something like Jekyll to create a static blog lets you put it on AWS S3. For all but the highest traffic sites the bandwidth cost is trivial and you totally remove all the issues with uptime and securing a server.

Same applies to GitHub pages.

I originally tried github pages, but had issues with getting an SSL cert working with Cloudflare. I ended up using AWS Certificate Manager to add an auto updating cert to CloudFront.

Re: Why I left Medium and moved back to my own domain

#35
I feel one of the main reasons Medium is so successful is that they cracked discoverability and rank high on Google for any topic (sort of like Wikipedia). Hence, I am hesitant to move away from it although I really want to build a sustainable, long-term business on my own domain.

Any ideas on this?

Re: Why I left Medium and moved back to my own domain

#36
post #6

I don't understand why people write programming blogs on Medium. I think that managing a live website with its own server (rather than only working on other people's projects) is a very important skill. If you don't want to manage WordPress, try a static site generator like Metalsmith: https://github.com/segmentio/metalsmith Deploy on Digital Ocean or Linode for $5/month. Free hosting options include Github Pages and…

One of the main reasons people use Medium is that their posts will be viewed by random Medium users in addition to their own fan base, thus growing their fan base and getting more views both in the short and long term.

I'd compare it to YouTube. People could theoretically host their own videos, but the main reason people use YouTube is because it is so much easier for others to discover your videos.

Also, +1 on using Linode! Have had multiple projects on their servers. No downtime at one point for over 365 days.

Re: Why I left Medium and moved back to my own domain

#37
post #7
post #6

I don't understand why people write programming blogs on Medium. I think that managing a live website with its own server (rather than only working on other people's projects) is a very important skill. If you don't want to manage WordPress, try a static site generator like Metalsmith: https://github.com/segmentio/metalsmith Deploy on Digital Ocean or Linode for $5/month. Free hosting options include Github Pages and…

Or even $2,5 Vultr if you are on a budget.

They are constantly "Temporarily sold out", at least in European regions.

Re: Why I left Medium and moved back to my own domain

#38
post #35

I feel one of the main reasons Medium is so successful is that they cracked discoverability and rank high on Google for any topic (sort of like Wikipedia). Hence, I am hesitant to move away from it although I really want to build a sustainable, long-term business on my own domain. Any ideas on this?

How did they cracke discoverability? Some posts are famous and rank higher, I haven't noticed a general rank boost. Also, I have stumbled upon a lot of blogs on own domains that turned out to be Medium hosted. I assume these don't get any advantage on Google?

Re: Why I left Medium and moved back to my own domain

#39
post #35

I feel one of the main reasons Medium is so successful is that they cracked discoverability and rank high on Google for any topic (sort of like Wikipedia). Hence, I am hesitant to move away from it although I really want to build a sustainable, long-term business on my own domain. Any ideas on this?

My advice: Publish on your own domain, syndicate to Medium (and LinkedIn, and whatever) shortly after.

Always import the story[1] so that Medium adds a rel="canonical" link, and link back to the canonical version (e.g. "Originally published at XXX" in the text of the story itself.

[1] https://medium.com/p/import

Re: Why I left Medium and moved back to my own domain

#40
post #35

I feel one of the main reasons Medium is so successful is that they cracked discoverability and rank high on Google for any topic (sort of like Wikipedia). Hence, I am hesitant to move away from it although I really want to build a sustainable, long-term business on my own domain. Any ideas on this?

I can concur that this is a problem.

I had a medium blog which is now dead and I moved my stuff to a private domain which I had for decades.

The medium blog still ranks higher in google searches than my own domain.

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