I suspect posts on medium get up voted more in hacker news but I don't have data to back this claim.
Medium is a poor choice for blogging
81–90 of 396 posts
Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does Medium do for engagement that ye olde static site doesn't do? Is this something that can be done outside Medium?
Users actually discover/browse Medium, and will hit content that isn't directly searched through their explore features/algorithms. Hosting your own site means relying on cross-posting/SEO/etc.
This is a thing that people actually do? Who are these people, and what other interesting things do they do?
I have never gone to medium.com directly, I have only ever wound up there through an article being crossposted on this site, Twitter, FB, or the rare case that one of my email newsletters links to something on there.
Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging
#83Sometimes I read articles like this and think I'm past it. It's like the whole web has turned in to this pool of mud and no-one realises what it was like before. A blog is a text file on a screen. There's really no need to do it on a proprietary system, you can literally upload a text file to your own host, but if you can't be bothered, somewhere like GitHub Pages. You want an image? Here's a tag: If the idea is that…
Yes, this a thousand times. One example, Dan Luu [1] gets this absolutely right. His blog would probably look similar on Lynx, or any text-only browser, yet is better than 99.99% of stuff "out there".
Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging
#84I hate modern web. Every site nowdays filled with bright/flashing/wobbling/jumping buttons, modal windows, pinned bars covering 1/3 of the content (or 2/3 on my phone in landscape mode) and asking me to install Yet Another Special App to view site. But I already have app for viewing sites - damn web browser. Browser can even open different pages in different tabs. Or even different sites in different tabs, unbelievable!
(Will it ever end?)
Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging
#85Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging
#86I just use Hugo for my personal blog.
I use medium to post snippets to help attract traffic.
Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging
#87The proper way to think of Medium is as "Long Form Twitter" - that it's not where you should primarily post your long treatise about XYZ, but that it's a secondary platform for promoting it, interacting with the audience there, etc.
OPs article describes the first landing UX - which is definitely bad, but not what a habitual Medium reader sees.
I wrote this much bigger posts about it here [1], but the TL;DR is that you should post on your own site and use Medium's hidden "Import" tool to bring your content into their platform:
This preserves the SEO of your original article because it adds a rel canonical tag.
1 - https://sendcheckit.com/blog/why-you-should-put-your-content...
Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging
#88This topic comes up fairly often. I think about it a lot - as a Medium user and as a person who has managed multiple wordpress blogs.
##Here's my thoughts on why Medium is so popular:
1. It's easy. We are all techies here. We often underestimate the weight of this.
2. It looks better than your average blog theme. (With 0 effort)
3. It promises the opportunity to access a larger audience. (Even if it does not deliver on that promise)
4. It provides an endorphin rush though likes/claps and the analytics/view counts.
##What the average blogger doesn't care about:
1. Effort Overhead. Managing a web server, buying a domain, configuring a wordpress blog, updating wordpress, choosing a theme, deleting spam comments etc.
2. Content ownership. Most people don't think about it that much.
3. RSS feeds. I'm willing to bet >80% of bloggers have no idea that people still use RSS (or even what it is at this stage)
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I don't think Medium is perfect, but I also don't think any of the alternatives are good enough either.
Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging
#89What would be a good alternative ?
Dev.to has been gaining popularity.
Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I use Jekyll and Forestry.io for my site but I’m also realistic and know that solution is a little too complicated for a lot of WordPress and Tumblr folks. The uptake in these tools are because of their simplicity, which honestly the design patterns haven’t changed in almost 20 years.
There is a great solution Publii - works like WordPress but generated static files. Great tool for beginners or developers. https://getpublii.com
Come on man, 100% of your posts is shilling for Publii.