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Show HN: Able – an alternative to Medium

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Re: Show HN: Able – an alternative to Medium

#21

Post by sandGorgon »

three things:

1. its hard to search for you guys. your name is hard to SEO on. for example "medium kafka" gets you relevant search results. "able blog" doesnt even feature you in the first page. Could you consider changing it ?

2. your tld is nice for branding, but im not sure if you know that these kind of tld have resolution issues in Asia. it would be nice if you were on a .com (even ablebio.com). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15663988 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20981212

3. the .bio domain is dangerous. https://icannwiki.org/.bio >Thus, to respect the European Union's standards for 'bio' /organic food, this open TLD will have regulations in place for registrants intending to use it as a space for organic food products. The rest of the non-organic related TLD will not be regulated. The French warning notes the wide range of international standards on agricultural products and organic food, and consequently believes that the TLD can not be implemented unless it is not at all used to denote material related to organic agriculture. It warns of consumer harm or confusion if the TLD were to be implemented.

Since this is a blog service, you would have to strongly regulate this - otherwise other blogs would go down if the EU screws you because of some agricultural/organic food blog someone writes.

in fact you can read lots of similar posts here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20981212 , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15663988

Re: Show HN: Able – an alternative to Medium

#22

Post by new_here »

Tinfoilhat666 wrote: post #18

Some pages have horizontal scrollbar on my mobile firefox, such as this https://able.bio/DavidLandup/password-encoding-with-spring-s... Also, why .bio? Sounds like biotech web site.

Thanks, will fix that.

> Also, why .bio? Sounds like biotech web site.

Because we couldn't afford the .com and .io wouldn't sell. So we had to get creative. The idea is that your able bio can be found at able.bio/username

Re: Show HN: Able – an alternative to Medium

#23

Post by stekern »

Tinfoilhat666 wrote: post #18

Some pages have horizontal scrollbar on my mobile firefox, such as this https://able.bio/DavidLandup/password-encoding-with-spring-s... Also, why .bio? Sounds like biotech web site.

I assume it's bio as in short for biography, which can be fitting in the context of a blogging platform. This was at least my first thought upon seeing the domain, and I didn't make any association with biology, biotech, etc. until I saw your comment.

Re: Show HN: Able – an alternative to Medium

#24

Post by new_here »

sandGorgon wrote: post #21

three things: 1. its hard to search for you guys. your name is hard to SEO on. for example "medium kafka" gets you relevant search results. "able blog" doesnt even feature you in the first page. Could you consider changing it ? 2. your tld is nice for branding, but im not sure if you know that these kind of tld have resolution issues in Asia. it would be nice if you were on a .com (even ablebio.com). https://news.yco…

Thanks for the feedback, we're still quite a small site so our authority still needs to grow. Google has said that TLD's shouldn't affect ranking.

I didn't know there about the issues in Asia, thanks for mentioning this.

We've looked into the use of bio and there was a case where they considered it to be appriopriate for biographical purposes.

Ultimately though, we do want to get a better tld. I just can't afford it on my current salary :) - suggestions are welcome.

Re: Show HN: Able – an alternative to Medium

#26

Post by new_here »

jangliss wrote: post #20

Great work - there needs to be a good place to write for free without the site then trying to sell the writing on. I've signed up to your newsletter but it took me a little scrabbling about to figure out how.

We'll charge businesses to advertise their vacancies, so we don't have to get in the way of developers/users.

It should ask you what notifications you'd like to receive during the onboarding process and you can just check the 'Digest' box. Did that not show up for you?

Re: Show HN: Able – an alternative to Medium

#27

Post by logifail »

dfhfkslhhj wrote: post #16
thedudeabides5 wrote: post #9

Great. When medium started throwing up paywalls we stopped using it. Anyone want to guess when these guys put up their first paywall? I'll go with January 2021.

It's becoming impossible to "pardon the interruption" with Medium when it happens multiple times a day. For me it's a reflexive response at this point, I don't even remember what they're asking for, my hand just moves to close the thing.

> For me it's a reflexive response at this point [...]

Q: Why would one not install NoScript and get rid of these "interruptions" forever?

Re: Show HN: Able – an alternative to Medium

#29

Post by joelrunyon »

Just roll your own blog already. If there's one thing these services reinforce over and over again - it's that they'll change their terms over time.

Own your site. Own your data. Put it all on your own terms.

If you need help setting one up (unlikely for this crowd), you can have one made for you for free here.

https://StartABlog.com/free-blog

Re: Show HN: Able – an alternative to Medium

#30

Post by new_here »

wingtales wrote: post #28

Fantastic to see Medium competition. I've been so frustrated with "let's make it official"-esque messages. Best of luck - I will be using you!

Thanks so much for your support. We hope it becomes a useful place for the community. Always keen to hear feedback.
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