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Why I left Medium and moved back to my own domain

arslan.io

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

#41

Post by dasil003 »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #10
JoshMnem wrote: 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…

But it's not the same sort of skill as, say, doing low-level graphics programming, or database query optimization. Just because you're a programmer doesn't mean you're a web developer. It's like saying that it doesn't make sense for a carpenter to live in a house they didn't build, or for a heart surgeon not to pull out his own wisdom teeth.

To be fair, it probably doesn't make sense for a dental surgeon to pull his own teeth either.

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

#42

Post by slig »

djsumdog wrote: post #30
ngsayjoe wrote: post #14

I recently wanted to move my Tumblr personal blog to Medium however after a few days of nightmare and still unable to setup a custom domain despite having paid $75 fee i requested a refund and closed my account. Their customer service and documentation kind of sucks!

It's sad that a process like this is still somehow manual. I can't imagine what technical debt they must have where they can't automate custom domains.

I believe it's by design. They want their brand "medium.com" visible. They don't want to become a commodity blog hosting.

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

#43

Post by copperx »

francis-io wrote: post #34
copperx wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you have a login? Or why would you need SSL on a static page?

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

#45

Post by Jaruzel »

MikusR wrote: post #31
Jaruzel wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

He's just blocking high traffic referrers. Which I agree is odd. It's not like his site is media heavy.

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

#46

Post by freehunter »

untog wrote: post #23
tyingq wrote: post #2

"Writing comments to Medium posts feels awkward because each comment is treated as a blog post." This is also awkward from the reader point of view. Trying to follow a comment chain on medium is frustrating as it only shows the first level, diving in switches pages, and often, a need to press a second "load all comments" button. Then the back button to wind your way back up. Is there some sound reasoning for why it w…

I suspect it's because they didn't/don't want people to comment in the usual way - you can highlight text on an article and leave short comments in the relevant place if you want to do that. I think the comments section at the end was intended more as a place for lengthy reaction posts. It's why comments have "recommend" rather than "like" as a button. I might "like" someone saying "great post!" but I'm not going to…

Commenting on articles is a terrible method of interaction. Anti-spam is hard, and spammers always win. Trolls always win. Comments rarely add much to the discussion from the article, and they're often hard to follow. There's no reason to leave a comment saying "great post!". It's spam. It's unnecessary.

Blogs are a wholly inappropriate place for back-and-forth discourse to happen simply because if I have a blog, it's my blog. It's not a discussion board. I inherently have the advantage, I control the conversation, and it's all about me. I have the ability to delete comments I disagree with. That's not discourse, that's an echo chamber.

I completely agree with Medium. Just because blog posts have historically had comments doesn't mean it's the right choice. The minute people accepted "pingbacks" as a valid form of comment was the moment comments died. V!AGR@ and P3N15 type spam sealed the deal.

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

#47

Post by tinalumfoil »

untog wrote: post #23
tyingq wrote: post #2

"Writing comments to Medium posts feels awkward because each comment is treated as a blog post." This is also awkward from the reader point of view. Trying to follow a comment chain on medium is frustrating as it only shows the first level, diving in switches pages, and often, a need to press a second "load all comments" button. Then the back button to wind your way back up. Is there some sound reasoning for why it w…

I suspect it's because they didn't/don't want people to comment in the usual way - you can highlight text on an article and leave short comments in the relevant place if you want to do that. I think the comments section at the end was intended more as a place for lengthy reaction posts. It's why comments have "recommend" rather than "like" as a button. I might "like" someone saying "great post!" but I'm not going to…

I hate reaction posts in comments section. I see this mostly on reddit with posts simply saying "I agree" or "well said" and if your lucky quoting some interesting part of the article. I get the feeling these are up voted by people that just want the important quotes to save time and those that agree so much they want to drown out other conversation. Intended or not these comments kill all conversation. They add absolutely nothing to the discussion and leave no room for more discussion.

If Medium is successful in separating reactions from actual content then I have to side with them. The fact is most discussion happens on reddit and HN so there's little real loss of intelligent discussion.

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

#48

Post by arkitaip »

freehunter wrote: post #46
untog wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect it's because they didn't/don't want people to comment in the usual way - you can highlight text on an article and leave short comments in the relevant place if you want to do that. I think the comments section at the end was intended more as a place for lengthy reaction posts. It's why comments have "recommend" rather than "like" as a button. I might "like" someone saying "great post!" but I'm not going to…

Commenting on articles is a terrible method of interaction. Anti-spam is hard, and spammers always win. Trolls always win. Comments rarely add much to the discussion from the article, and they're often hard to follow. There's no reason to leave a comment saying "great post!". It's spam. It's unnecessary. Blogs are a wholly inappropriate place for back-and-forth discourse to happen simply because if I have a blog, it'…

Blogs belonging to software tend to be very valuable. People will share insights or tips long after the blog post has been written, often extending the shelf life of the code or software.

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

#49

Post by giobox »

mercer wrote: post #29
JoshMnem wrote: 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 can't speak for others, but one reason why I'd use something like Medium is precisely to ensure that I don't manage anything by myself except for the content production part. I have a long list of attempts at setting up my own site, but because it's mine I wanted to get it just right. And so down the rabbit hole I go: making sure my server is super-secure (because it's important hey I'll learn in the process!), fin…

I've had largely the same experiences. Recently I decided to challenge myself to instead keep it simple, rather than treat the whole thing as a "learn some new thing along the way" type exercise. The end result is I actually have a blog I'm actually writing on that is absurdly easy to maintain, rather than the usual (for me anyway!) 75 percent complete side project in some new technology I'll never get around to finishing.

Simple VPS, webserver, letsencrypt, static site generator, cloud flare for CDN duties and a little CSS. All I do now is write a new article in Markdown every now and then, then run a simple shell script to regenerate the site and rsync the newly minted static pages to the server.

Personal sites or new blogs are all too often victims of premature optimisation - your amazing google PageSpeed score is nice, but who cares if no one is reading.

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

#50

Post by arkitaip »

JoshMnem wrote: 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…

It can also be absolutely trivial and soul sucking in that you have to do lots of maintenance when all you want to do is share ideas.
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