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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

#161

Post by coldtea »

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 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.

That's, like, your opinion, man.

I personally enjoy engaging in discussions on blogs and on my (now defunct) old personal blog, and have seen great exchanges (Just see Lambda the Ultimate for an example).

Sure, also bad ones, that's just life. Articles and posts can also be as bad, if not worse, than comments.

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

#162

Post by coldtea »

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 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.

And knowing when not to waste your time setting up one is an even more important skill.

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

#163

Post by cookiecaper »

corobo wrote: post #120
cupcakestand wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Simple VPS, webserver, letsencrypt, static site generator, cloud flare for CDN duties and a little CSS. Why didn't you host on Github Pages and you could have saved all that but having the same flexibilty regarding a SSG use case?

> Why didn't you host on Github Pages Tried that once, fell down a 3 day rabbit hole trying all the static blog generators.. ended up picking WordPress.

Same. For all the times this is recommended, I haven't found a static blog generator that really works well. WordPress is still the easiest and most flexible to get running, but it's a PITA to keep it maintained.

After trying Lektor (fine for general use, but hard to theme; no pre-baked templating/theming system at all) and Hugo (tbh I don't remember the exact thing here, but I got really frustrated trying to do something and ended up deciding that themeless Lektor was better), I'm now holding out hope that Ghost, while not a SSG, will be good and simple enough that I can self-host a "blog" without falling back to raw HTML editing or WordPress. Started out by having to edit the package dependencies to versions that work on recent versions of Node... :\

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

#164

Post by m-p-3 »

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'd be alright if they offered both, a comment section, and a response feature, which allows more elaborate replies.

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

#165

Post by JoshMnem »

cookiecaper wrote: post #163
corobo wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why didn't you host on Github Pages Tried that once, fell down a 3 day rabbit hole trying all the static blog generators.. ended up picking WordPress.

Same. For all the times this is recommended, I haven't found a static blog generator that really works well. WordPress is still the easiest and most flexible to get running, but it's a PITA to keep it maintained. After trying Lektor (fine for general use, but hard to theme; no pre-baked templating/theming system at all) and Hugo (tbh I don't remember the exact thing here, but I got really frustrated trying to do some…

Try Metalsmith if you want to poke around and write code. Try Hugo if you want something that works out of the box but that doesn't have a plugin system.

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

#166

Post by copperx »

francis-io wrote: post #79
copperx wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Only when submitting forms.

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

#168

Post by sixQuarks »

tchaffee wrote: post #145
sixQuarks wrote: post #17

Moral of the story: Try to never rely on another company's platform for your business. It's hard enough creating a successful business, but to add a layer of risk on top of that is not smart.

Github, an ISP, mobile phone company, rented offices, an OS, hardware, and the list is almost endless. I actually think it's important to outsource as much as you can and focus on your core business.

you're obviously not understanding my comment

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

#169

Post by jccalhoun »

tuxracer wrote: post #137
Sylos wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case you're not aware, NoScript also exists for Android: https://noscript.net/nsa/ Not quite as functional as its bigger brother, but an option nonetheless.

NoScript is also integrated into https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brave.brow... This uses Chrome so there's likely higher compatibility with mobile sites

script blocking may be built in but I don't think noscript is.

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

#170

Post by stagbeetle »

tinalumfoil wrote: post #47
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…

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 abso…

> The fact is most discussion happens on reddit and HN so there's little real loss of intelligent discussion.

HN has the opposite issue. There is no want of sophisticated dialog here, but it borders on discussion for the sake of discussion.

One of many such exercises in futility that has overcome this specious neo-hacker culture.

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