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Medium is not the home for your ideas

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Re: Medium is not the home for your ideas

#21

Post by wincy »

dvtrn wrote: post #8
xpe wrote: post #2

The core argument against Medium is: "Until you host your content on your platform, they will always live at the mercy of the company hosting the platform."

Owning your content and self-publication is one of the principles of the indieweb[0]. This is as relevant of a discussion I think to plug it. When it comes to alternatives to the social media/algorithm-ified/data-hungry web-that in my opinion we should have gotten-it’s the IndieWeb. [0] https://indieweb.org/principles

Except now if you say things that a group doesn’t like you just get ddosed out of existence.

Re: Medium is not the home for your ideas

#22

Post by paulie_a »

I've mostly blocked medium mentally and via software. I use google feed on a daily basis and medium was banned there for a while now. Mentally occasionally a really interesting article pops up that I want to read. Then medium prevents me from doing so. It can be interesting somewhere else. If you are a content creator you basically damage your brand by using medium

The ux can be described as slimy at best.

Re: Medium is not the home for your ideas

#23

Post by cm2187 »

xpe wrote: post #2

The core argument against Medium is: "Until you host your content on your platform, they will always live at the mercy of the company hosting the platform."

But unless you own a datacentre, you are always using someone else's platform, whether it is a cloud provider, a colocation or anything in between.

Re: Medium is not the home for your ideas

#24

Post by badsectoracula »

joelrunyon wrote: post #16

I've been yelling about this for years, but please start & own your own blog. Use webflow, ghost or whatever you like, but wordpress is good enough for most people. HN audience can likely handle their own, but if ease-of-setup is an issue - I created StartABlog.com to help people do this (and we'll actually set up your site for you for free - https://startablog.com/start ). Own your platform. Own your content. Own yo…

Another easy solution, both for hosting and ownership, is using a static site generator/editor. I like desktop-based visual WYSIWYG tools so i use Publii[0] (example[1], though i really need to write something more :-P or at least move some older articles i had in now-defunct blogs that were hosted by others). I'm not a big fan of the program though (i dislike how it is based on Electron while not even taking advantage of it being based on Electron - e.g. no full WYSIWYG and not even an in-app site preview - and the UX has all the issues i dislike by modern apps like a design that pretends i'm using an oversized tablet) but it is the only one that does what i want without requiring me to enter cryptic codes (ok, markdown isn't so cryptic but i really prefer using WYSIWYG tools), having inline images/galleries and some (primitive) site management while generating static HTML (though a bit too heavy and i really dislike the themes... but again, not much of a choice and the tech used to make the themes look like a PITA so i avoid touching it for now).

[0] https://getpublii.com/

[1] http://runtimeterror.com/devlog/

Re: Medium is not the home for your ideas

#25

Post by paulie_a »

tomc1985 wrote: post #19
detaro wrote: post #7

It's telling that Medium stopped allowing custom domains. Their brand over yours, and no way of cleanly migrating elsewhere when they start log-in walls etc. (Of course their brand is now kinda poisoned by "log-in wall" and lots of low-quality "think-pieces", so you don't really want to be associated with theirs - which was somewhat different when Medium started)

I don't know, was it? From the beginning everything on Medium seemed to be written by folks who styled themselves as "thought leaders," but clearly weren't

Thought leader is a synonym for empty suit.

If someone uses that in a bio you can just move along, you won't miss anything.

Re: Medium is not the home for your ideas

#26

Post by alicemaz »

tomc1985 wrote: post #19
detaro wrote: post #7

It's telling that Medium stopped allowing custom domains. Their brand over yours, and no way of cleanly migrating elsewhere when they start log-in walls etc. (Of course their brand is now kinda poisoned by "log-in wall" and lots of low-quality "think-pieces", so you don't really want to be associated with theirs - which was somewhat different when Medium started)

I don't know, was it? From the beginning everything on Medium seemed to be written by folks who styled themselves as "thought leaders," but clearly weren't

medium had one killer insight, which was that if they dolled up blog posts to look like prestige news site articles, most people would mentally put them in the same category. at one point there was a wave of public figures using medium basically like they use/d the nyt oped section before and after

but they messed up their site chasing a business model, and nyt/wapo/etc basically turned into tech companies and fill the niche that medium wanted to. meanwhile substack mints prestige by emphatically not looking like a news site. medium doesn't really have a place on either end of that anymore

Re: Medium is not the home for your ideas

#27

Post by kevingadd »

joelrunyon wrote: post #16

I've been yelling about this for years, but please start & own your own blog. Use webflow, ghost or whatever you like, but wordpress is good enough for most people. HN audience can likely handle their own, but if ease-of-setup is an issue - I created StartABlog.com to help people do this (and we'll actually set up your site for you for free - https://startablog.com/start ). Own your platform. Own your content. Own yo…

Agreed, but don't host your own wordpress unless you're planning to run a botnet. Everyone I know who's hosted their own wordpress in the past two decades has eventually regretted it.

Re: Medium is not the home for your ideas

#28

Post by simula67 »

joelrunyon wrote: post #16

I've been yelling about this for years, but please start & own your own blog. Use webflow, ghost or whatever you like, but wordpress is good enough for most people. HN audience can likely handle their own, but if ease-of-setup is an issue - I created StartABlog.com to help people do this (and we'll actually set up your site for you for free - https://startablog.com/start ). Own your platform. Own your content. Own yo…

How do you make sure you don't get hacked using Wordpress?

I hosted my own blog for a short while and got hacked, so I moved back to Wordpress.com.

Re: Medium is not the home for your ideas

#29

Post by thereyougo »

People say that they loved medium in the past because of their custom domains. I think that they also had issues back then.

If your company is still running on Medium you're very limited with customizing your blog.

You can't add any CTA button, popup window, widget, or anything that can help you to justify your blog exsistance. If 1000 people get into your blog post, only around 30 will hit your homepage.

Compare it to other blogs where you can design it the way you want, because great UX and some traffic from Medium, I don't see the benefit of it.

Re: Medium is not the home for your ideas

#30

Post by realusername »

alicemaz wrote: post #20
realusername wrote: post #10

Another reason I host my own articles is that Medium is very heavy to load. Yes their design is great, but it's something that is achievable with a very small amount of CSS. This might not matter for a lot of people but I don't like how slow their platform is.

yea, it's actually surprising how heavy it is given it's all to provide a veneer of minimalism and simplicity. I run qutebrowser on musl, which is as you might guess not the most stable web experience, but one funny side effect is it makes me acutely aware of what sites are simple and what ones do too much. the three worst sites, that consistently 100% of the time freeze the tab they're opened in, are reddit wapo and…

Yes there's a massive contrast between their minimalist and slick brand and their actual platform which is one of the heaviest blogging platform.

I'm not sure what it does really but you can achieve a similar design with a few Kb of CSS.

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