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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

#71

Post by LightMachine »

s3nnyy wrote: post #59
dullgiulio wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I am not sure if I am overvaluing Medium but I feel that I owe the existence of my recruiting agency to them: - In November 2014 I published "8 reasons why I moved to Switzerland to work in tech" ( https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-t... ) - I immediately started getting CVs from people who googled "work in Switzerland in tech". Then, I asked local startups and firms if they would pay me if I…

That's a scary thought.

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

#72

Post by cupcakestand »

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…

Totally agree. Code embedding is also limited on Medium, I think they still lack syntax highlighting.

Btw, great tip wih Netlify. How is your experience with them, what are pros cons compared to Github Pages and can I run server code like Node for free?

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

#73

Post by pmontra »

About the dickbars:

1) I uBlock them on my phone and tablet. Unfortunately there are plenty of random sites on Medium with their own domain. I don't follow any of them and get there from HN or similar sites. Blocking all of them doesn't make sense because I'll probably never get back to that domain. I agree with the author, the button in the middle of the page really sucks.

2) On desktop, the button and the dickbar never show because I'm running with NoScript and they are a JavaScript thing :-)

The author misses another inconvenient feature of Medium, the login. It's either by oAuth (I don't remember which providers) or by email. That means they send me an email with a link to click to login. In theory it's ok, because obviously email is safer and more convenient than a password stored in a password manager (/sarcasm). The first time I used it the mail didn't arrive until the day after, so I've been primed against it. Probably almost everybody just login with Facebook or something so, quoting the author, "I’m not a part of his [Ev Williams] vision".

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

#74

Post by Kenji »

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.

If you're a halfway decent programmer, deploying a simple blog is trivial. There are many existing solutions that don't even require you to write a single line of code, and the problem is simple enough that you could write the entire thing yourself.

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

#75

Post by gboudrias »

cupcakestand wrote: post #69

To the point criticism of Medium, very detailed and the OP is picking the right issues of Medium. While Medium looks so beautiful and clean at first glance it really disappoints when you use it on a daily base both as a creator and as a user. Everytime I use Medium, I am surprised that Medium is successful. Its appearance feels definitely premium and significantly of higher value than any other blog system but the us…

> Which blog system should we use?

Hosting your own WordPress site? It's simple and easy. Why did anyone ever want to be on Medium in the first place? Most likely for the name association and the visibility that comes with it.

I think we have a responsibility to promote self-reliance as part of technological culture. If we want people to move away from centralization (which I do), we have to teach by example (which I do).

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

#76

Post by cupcakestand »

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.

I disagree. It doesn't matter what kind of coder you are, at some point you always deal with a shell. And setting up a blog on bare metal is done in few minutes on a shell. If you have never faced a shell or a remote server as a developer then you should find a toy project to do so. It's not the worst skill to have.

Moreover, I wouldn't see basic HTML or CSS as specific knowledge. This is something every coder knows (like English), of course not advanced layout stuff like Flexbox but the basic of HTML and CSS are common knowledge. And you do not need React, Webpack or any advanced stuff to make a simple SSG blog. You even don't need to understand HTML or CSS if you just stick with the standard templates. Just Markdown.

Edit: Why the downvote?

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

#78

Post by addicted »

cupcakestand wrote: post #69

To the point criticism of Medium, very detailed and the OP is picking the right issues of Medium. While Medium looks so beautiful and clean at first glance it really disappoints when you use it on a daily base both as a creator and as a user. Everytime I use Medium, I am surprised that Medium is successful. Its appearance feels definitely premium and significantly of higher value than any other blog system but the us…

As a reader I avoid Medium based articles.

For one thing, the UI for wildly different blogs are the same. This means that I am unable to place anything I read in context. As a visual learner, one of the ways I remember stuff I read is by remembering the entire context (for blogs this is usually the look of the blog). Medium completely eliminates that crutch for me.

I feel the overuse of annoying funny GIFs in the middle of articles is far more prevalent on Medium pages. I suspect because it's one of the only ways for authors to personalize their content visually.

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

#79

Post by francis-io »

copperx wrote: post #43
francis-io wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I believe Chrome, along with other browsers mark http sites as not secure, which is obviously undesirable.
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