Medium is not the home for your ideas • Hacker News Board

Re: Medium is not the home for your ideas

#321

Post by pjc50 » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 4:24 PM UTC

tomcam wrote: post #138

axegon_ wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Many years ago I was really happy with medium as a reader. And the feed algorithm was decent enough. By no means the perfect content but for the most part it pushed forward things I was interested in. However, the monetization model turned medium(originally a decent blogging platform) into tumblr and it was a race to the bottom from that point. Any website that asks you to register in order to read a blog po…

> this is still a terrible thing to do. What’s the alternative, assuming the blogger doesn’t want to give everything away for free?

I think at this stage there's so much content that they could save their time and ours by not writing it in the first place.

Re: Medium is not the home for your ideas

#322

Post by AndrewStephens » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 4:35 PM UTC

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…

> Own your platform. Own your content. Own your voice. Use everything else as distribution methods - not core dependencies.

100% agree. I even went as far as to write my own static-site generator (not that impressive, everyone seems to have one these days), but even hosted blogs are better than using the Mediums of this world.

There are trade-offs though. There is a little bit of on-going effort (and maybe expense) in keeping even an inactive blog going. Medium does take care of that side of things for you.

Re: Medium is not the home for your ideas

#323

Post by chipotle_coyote » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 4:38 PM UTC

jlokier wrote: post #306

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…

Counterpoint (devil's advocate): When you get sick, poor or die, your own platform will almost certainly disappear, taking your content and ideas with it. If it's on Medium, your content is more likely to survive your demise.

That assumes Medium survives your demise, which strikes me as a somewhat bold assumption to make.

Re: Medium is not the home for your ideas

#324

Post by tijuco2 » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 5:13 PM UTC

Their blogs are pleasing to read. Great font and colors, but everything there is politically engaged and because of that when someone posts a link here I tend to skip it.

Re: Medium is not the home for your ideas

#325

Post by jessah » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 5:14 PM UTC

MangoCoffee wrote: post #141

"It’s always better to own your platform" - 100% i listen to some Joe Rogan's podcast when he got some interesting guests. i don't remember which one but Joe mentioned Twitter ban Zuby for a reply to someone with "OK, dude". i look up Zuby and yup. Twitter ban Zuby for saying "OK, dude" to someone. how the fuck is "OK, dude" hateful? Joe said Zuby is the nicest guy that he ever meet and Joe is right. they come for Zu…

You lack understanding of the quote by Evelyn Beatrive Hall. It means that you are allowed to disapprove of what Twitter did, but you should defend to the death there right to do it. That Twitter bans Zuby is freedom of speech from their side. If they wouldn't dare to do this, because of the "cancel culture" shouting mob, than we would have a problem. I'm really shocked about your rant against freedom of speech and the hypocritical attitude of proclaiming yourself as a defender of freedom to speak. You seem to value the right to do and say what you want only if it's what you decided is right.

Re: Medium is not the home for your ideas

#326

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 5:17 PM UTC

insickness wrote: post #309

axegon_ wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Many years ago I was really happy with medium as a reader. And the feed algorithm was decent enough. By no means the perfect content but for the most part it pushed forward things I was interested in. However, the monetization model turned medium(originally a decent blogging platform) into tumblr and it was a race to the bottom from that point. Any website that asks you to register in order to read a blog po…

So you read the full blog post for free, then you get to the bottom and see that they are promoting an e-book free in exchange for an email address and that's terrible to you? Does it piss you off when authors don't give away their books for free as well?

[deleted]

Re: Medium is not the home for your ideas

#327

Post by dmalvarado » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 5:17 PM UTC

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…

> 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).

Brilliant idea.

> Your password for Bluehost (double check that you spelled this right!)

uhhhh

Re: Medium is not the home for your ideas

#328

Post by ZeikJT » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 5:22 PM UTC

dmalvarado wrote: post #327

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…

> 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 ). Brilliant idea. > Your password for Bluehost (double check that you spelled this right!) uhhhh

I guess Bluehost doesn't have any auth scheme so they had to use the age old workaround of just sharing passwords... not great at all.

Also, you missed the fact that there's a typo on that line at the very end!

> Your password for Bluehost (double check that you spelled this right!)e

There's also the line above the password part:

> Once you've purchased your hosting - forward the confirmation email you received to: team@startablog.com

Which since I don't have I can't confirm if it has any sensitive information or not.

Re: Medium is not the home for your ideas

#329

Post by kmod » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 5:24 PM UTC

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…

I'll add my experience as a counterpoint -- I've been running my own wordpress blog for several years now, and the amount of effort involved has been surprisingly high. I've had to tune apache numerous times (seriously, who wants to tune apache in order to write a blog), I have to regularly defend it against malicious traffic, and I've had to manually fix the installation after a plugin installation prevented wordpress from starting. Plus since it's a one-off, I'm not convinced that I could bring it back if anything were to happen to the server it runs on.

For a project blog I used hosted wordpress, and I found that to be a pretty good middle ground. Honestly I can't think of a case where running your own wordpress server is a good use of your time.

Re: Medium is not the home for your ideas

#330

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 22, 2020, 5:28 PM UTC

badsectoracula wrote: post #205

boramalper wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Publii looks great! Just out of curiosity, do you know any other WYSIWYG alternatives out there?

No, other (desktop-based) stuff i know is WYSIWYG editors from the 90s. Well, there is BlueGriffon but last time i used that it felt very clunky. But if there was something else i'd probably try it too.

[deleted]