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Medium is a poor choice for blogging

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Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging

#221

Post by FiveSquared »

gerbilly wrote: post #210
asdff wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's like the whole web has turned in to this pool of mud and no-one realises what it was like before. Every website is trying to reinvent the wheel. Foolish! I hate the grid/huge amount of white space layout that is so pervasive now. Websites that have their information in a nice and clean, condensed list view are unicorns now. Condensed lists are literally the best layout to convey information in a given space, t…

> except they give you much more information at a time without having to endlessly scroll. I think getting people to scroll isn't an accident, they want you to have to scroll. Scrolling a website makes you physically interact with it, and I bet that has some psychological effects that work out in favour of the content creators. Whenever I am in a place where you have to wait a lot, like at a bus station, nearly every…

But who tf wants to wait for a bus? And its hella awkward talking to strangers.

Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging

#222

Post by danShumway »

coldtea wrote: post #117
tpaschalis wrote: post #33

It's funny, because some years ago when Medium blogs were starting to be posted left and right, people were praising the interface, and nobody listened to the few who objected. Now, we need all kinds of tricks, add-ons and blocks to just read five-minute posts during our commute. It's 2018, and there are a gazillion ways to get yourself in control of your stuff. The next free framework that comes, which promises a cl…

> It's 2018, and there are a gazillion ways to get yourself in control of your stuff. But zero ways to get people to read it. I only read his post because it's on HN. And I read Medium stuff regularly on Medium. The chances of most people discovering some random blog? Not so much. Whereas Medium has concentrated eyeballs and knows their preferences to serve them stuff that's close to their tastes...

> I only read his post because it's on HN. And I read Medium stuff regularly on Medium.

I totally get where you're coming from, but I'm not convinced that Medium helps at all. I mean, this article was posted to Medium. Medium didn't put it in front of you. So how is Medium helping?

I used to cross-post everything I wrote to Medium, because I thought it was a good reader acquisition strategy. But posting on Medium doesn't automatically get you readership -- you still have to go find readers and rely on them sharing stuff on traditional sites like HN/Reddit/Twitter/Facebook. And none of that sharing process requires your content to be on Medium.

For all of the effort I put into formatting articles well, and making sure that I matched popular writing styles, and adapting things, a post I put on Medium will get In contrast, I had one good post get traction on HN, and on average my self-hosted blog now gets more visitors than that per day. So now I don't even bother cross-posting, because I don't see how Medium helps me get content picked up on other social sites.

Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging

#224

Post by jseliger »

jypepin wrote: post #93

I'm amazed at how many people here say that people should simply use a static site generator instead of wordpress or medium. Does anyone else understand that probably 99% of Medium traffic (both reader and writer) don't even understand those words and would have no idea even where to begin? Most of them probably had trouble just signing up on Medium and already forgot their passwords. This is where Medium wins. It lo…

Well said. I started a Wordpress blog on a whim, years ago, on Wordpress.com, and I think many people underestimate how whimsical many blog starts are.

For the average person (including me), going to www.staticsite.com, entering an email and password, and then starting is the way it happens. If that is not a quick, painless, and obvious process, then the vast majority of people won't do it.

Medium got going because it was like that (I think—maybe it is still like that).

Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging

#226

Post by ozten »

citilife wrote: post #58

"Hosting" your own blog takes around an hour of setup for wordpress or github pages. Personally, I use vultr + wordpress for my blog[1], but I have technical expertise - it took only 30 minutes to setup and transfer from my previous provider. Reason I like to host my own, is I control the content, the popups, the UI, etc. If you care about that, host it yourself. Medium is there to make money, we can't fault them for…

It takes 30 minutes plus 9 months of learning DNS, hosting, S3, static site generator, CLI ;)

Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging

#227

Post by bbbowzer »

mikedd wrote: post #213

Bashing medium is cool and all but why not present some alternatives. I clicked on it actually expecting some random article about "hey check out this cool open-source _built_in_some_hipster_language_ blogging _buzzword_ _buzzword_ platform I've built".. Joke aside..gimme alternatives fam.

open port 443

Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging

#228

Post by nadezhda18 »

sarthakjain wrote: post #190
coldtea wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's 2018, and there are a gazillion ways to get yourself in control of your stuff. But zero ways to get people to read it. I only read his post because it's on HN. And I read Medium stuff regularly on Medium. The chances of most people discovering some random blog? Not so much. Whereas Medium has concentrated eyeballs and knows their preferences to serve them stuff that's close to their tastes...

Medium also gets you really good seo

through what features?

Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging

#229

Post by gus_massa »

wild_preference wrote: post #115
aaaaaaaaaab wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on man, 100% of your posts is shilling for Publii.

They really are. Does HN not do anything against accounts that so obviously advertise?

The mods can't see everything. It depends how evident it is and if the comments are relevant [1] and if the if the only purpose of the user is to make adds. My guess is that this user only makes a comment per month, so it's not so easy to remember.

For an official reply, you can send an email to the mods hn@ycombinator.com and they can take a look at the history of comments of the user.

[For example, this is an example of a comment that is not relevant at all https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16961492 ]

[1] It's fine to reply to the technical questions that appear about your page/app/product. It's not fine to add a link to your product in unconnected threads.

Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging

#230

Post by FiveSquared »

foo101 wrote: post #150

Most of the popular online services have screwed up their interface. I think it started with Digg. It was once a loved website. The screwed up the interface and everyone ran to Reddit. Now Reddit has screwed up their interface too. We all used to love Google for its simple and elegant web interfaces. Look at what a mess GMail is now. If there is anything that more than 10 years of Web 2.0 teaches us, it is that once…

Yeah i dont wanna setup up a sever (because that hella insercure) but I want my info to be free! Wordpress?
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