
Medium is not the home for your ideas - rahulchowdhury
https://hulry.com/medium-vs-own-blog/
======
joelrunyon
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](https://startablog.com/start)).

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

~~~
jiggawatts
What's the best static site generator that meets the following requirements:

a) Doesn't use node.js.

b) Has built-in syntax highlighting for C#, SQL, PowerShell and Rust at a
minimum.

c) Is also good at "photo journals" or galleries.

I played around with Hugo, but the themes were ugly and it was very weak at
managing pictures associated with an entry instead of the entire site.

~~~
axegon_
Some time ago I asked myself the same question. Ideally I wanted not so much a
generator but rather something that is completely self-contained. Essentially
add a markdown or html file, commit and move on. Surprisingly enough I
couldn't find anything that does that so I ended up building one myself.
Doesn't support syntax highlighting at the moment but I've considered looking
into it. Perhaps I should open source it and see if someone wants to give a
hand, who knows...

~~~
abdullahkhalids
Pelican [1] works this way, and I love it for my blog/website.

I write a post in markdown, commit and run a pelican-provided script that
uploads the generated site to the hosting server. The script-running could be
done with a hook.

[1] [https://blog.getpelican.com/](https://blog.getpelican.com/)

~~~
axegon_
Um... No, it doesn't.

> I write a post in markdown, commit and run a pelican-provided script that
> uploads the generated site to the hosting server. The script-running could
> be done with a hook.

This is exactly what I don't want to deal with. Sure, I could use a ci service
but this is a typical case of over-engineering a simple problem.

~~~
iamacyborg
I use Pelican with hosting on Netlify.

On my end I write a new markdown post and push it to Github.

At that point Netlify takes over to rebuild and redeploy my site including the
new post. It's pretty trivial to do.

[https://github.com/jacquescorbytuech/Blog](https://github.com/jacquescorbytuech/Blog)

[https://www.jacquescorbytuech.com/](https://www.jacquescorbytuech.com/)

~~~
axegon_
Trivial? Totally. Self-contained? Absolutely no.

Say Microsoft decides to kill github pages. OK, fine, next.

Now picture Netlify changing some policy, adding some pricing or killing off a
service which you need(unlikely but not entirely impossible). You have to
setup the whole thing all over again with someone else, be it circleci,
jenkins, gitlab, etc. Though in different contexts, I've been in similar
situations and by the third time I usually want to murder someone.

~~~
onion2k
You're overestimating Netlify's build tooling. It literally just spins up a
virtual machine with Node on it, clones your repo, and does an `npm install &&
npm build`. When that finishes it copies the output directory to a server to
host. Moving to a different host is a case of finding something that will let
you do the `npm install && npm build` bit, which practically every modern
hosting company does these days. Netlify's automated builds aren't even close
to the complexity of running a CI process.

If you wanted to you could run the build process locally and commit the output
HTML and CSS files to the repo, and the build process wouldn't even be
necessary. You'd just need to copy the output files to a server using a git
commit hook.

~~~
axegon_
Which brings us back to my original question: Why????? Why bother doing all
that and relying on third party tooling, regardless of how simple it is to run
a command? If this is what I wanted, I could write a 5 line shell script on a
raspberry pi which can do just that.

I DON'T want to do either of that. Add a file, push it and know everything has
worked.

~~~
onion2k
The reason I have things set up to deploy from github to Netlify is mainly
because I'm not the only contributor to things I work on. As soon as you work
in a team it's _far_ simpler to have a central service that people push to
doing the builds, especially if you don't want contributors to have access to
the host server.

~~~
axegon_
I'm not questioning the scenario where you have multiple contributors. This is
one of the major reasons why the concept of ci/cd exists.

The topic of the thread is __specifically__ personal blogs/pages and my point
is as strong as ever: having to deal with builds, cis, for your personal page
is pure bs.

------
vishnu_ks
Folks looking for a Medium alternative, please checkout
[https://diff.blog](https://diff.blog). It's an aggregator of developer and
engineering blogs I built an year back. It has been growing steadily since.
The reason why I built this was to solve the problem of disoveralibilty of
self hosted blogs. It's hard for bloggers with self hosted blogs to reach a
big audience. So a lot of them end up moving to a platform like Medium which
gives them the audience. But they in turn give up their identity and content.
diff.blog aims to fix that by solving the discoverabilty problem of self
hosted blogs. Though dif.blog is not anywhere near in terms of the audience
size of Medium at the moment. But hopefully it will come close one day.

~~~
dgellow
Thanks for sharing, that's a nice project with a good user experience. That
reminds me of the concept of blog "planet" that was somewhat popular in the
Linux world a decade ago. Basically an aggregate of blog feeds loosely related
to a given topic, you can follow it and have the feeling that you're following
a community, without the drama that you have on social media. It's a great
concept IMHO, and stupidly simple technically speaking.

As an example, Ubuntu still has theirs:
[https://planet.ubuntu.com/](https://planet.ubuntu.com/)

~~~
vishnu_ks
Thanks! Yeah. Blog planets are awesome. They defintely played a big role in me
coming up with diff.blog. [https://rubyland.news/](https://rubyland.news/) in
particular, which I came across while I was trying to learn Rails. Though
diff.blog is built using Django and not Ruby on Rails :)

------
detaro
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)

~~~
tomc1985
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

~~~
paulie_a
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.

~~~
quattrofan
100% this. I also noticed a trend of people calling themselves
"visionaries"...same thing.

------
joosters
_Even though Medium reinstated my profile, I stopped publishing on the
platform and moved to my blog again._

There's some history re-writing going on here. The tweet from Medium about
unblocking his account was in July 2018 - the author replied with 'Happens. No
worries. Thanks for resolving the issue guys', so they clearly weren't too
bothered about this at the time. They then went on to post over ten further
articles on Medium over the next six months - again, hardly the sign of
someone annoyed by the platform. (for contrast, they had only written one
earlier article in the year, so his output _increased_ after the issue)

...and now in July 2020, two years on, they have decided that _this_ was the
thing that stopped them using Medium? How is this _anything_ but a lie?

~~~
rahulchowdhury
Just to clear the air here. The posts that you are talking about were either
for company blogs, or casual "I don't care if they live or die" kind of posts.

At around the same time, I started working on a small blogging platform of my
own but gave up and started using SSGs like Gatsby, Jekyll, etc.

More on the move here: [https://hulry.com/back-to-
wordpress/](https://hulry.com/back-to-wordpress/)

Hope this clears things up. :)

~~~
joosters
Hey, thanks for the reply, and I should apologise to you: While it still seems
to me that the cause, effect & justification for leaving medium seems strange,
I didn't mean to accuse you of intentionally lying or deceiving people in your
article, sorry for the terrible wording.

------
mindfulhack
I want to run with this sentiment to a certain extreme:

This reminds me of Cloudflare blocking that pro-nazi website at the DNS level
- not because the content was illegal, but because of social or other reasons.

What this means is even your own domain and web server can be censored in
devastating ways, based purely on personal or cultural disagreement.

Of course I'm not supporting nazism, but it's a dangerous precedent for the
free and open web to moderate and censor people when you are not legally
compelled to. Even if you are, the laws of your country might be unjust.

Not blocking != endorsing, and to say it does is thought policing.

Thanks for this post. I won't be posting to Medium anymore.

~~~
coldtea
> _Of course I 'm not supporting nazism_

Nazism is the easy target. The precedence is removal of something legal by a
moral/social decision by a corporate entity. This is dangerous.

In the 50s, had they had internet, it could be leftist or communist
sympathizers' blogs (under the red scare). In the 60s it could be blacks civil
rights blogs (imagine a conservative southern CDN), In the 70s/80s it could be
pro-gay writings. In the GWB era it could be criticism of various wars, etc -
like the Dixie Chicks had their shows cancelled for speaking out.

It already includes all kind of right and left ideas stomped, if they don't
agree not just with your local country morals, but what with Americans think
those should be (this includes FB banning posts for "nudity" in 2020, as if
we're in the Victorian era, or as if it's e.g. French users are ok with
puritanism).

~~~
moises_silva
>>> Nazism is the easy target. The precedence is removal of something legal by
a moral/social decision by a corporate entity. This is dangerous.

Do we want companies to do just what's legal or what's moral? in the end even
laws are supposed to be trailing morality and disagreements are expected on
what's moral and what's not.

This is again the same old debate of whether is some sort of fundamental right
to be served by Cloudflare or have your content hosted by Twitter. I do not
like all forms of censorship but I also don't want private companies to be
forced to host just about any content people want to publish.

~~~
coldtea
> _Do we want companies to do just what 's legal or what's moral?_

Content hosting platforms I want them to merely do what's legal.

It's not up to them to make moral decisions.

They could still make those (moral decisions) in other areas, e.g. paying
their employees a good salary and not exploiting them, paying taxes, and so
on.

> _This is again the same old debate of whether is some sort of fundamental
> right to be served by Cloudflare or have your content hosted by Twitter._

I think that's mostly a debate in US culture, where the concepts about
censorship begin and end with what some founding Santas said 3 centuries ago
and its all about what the state can and cannot do.

In 2020, platforms are more important than the state for censoring. They even
have larger revenue than entire countries GDPs, and they are also operated by
people promoting their own culture and national interests, while catering to
an international audience of billions. It's the ultimate soft power space and
has vastly eclipsed the "public square".

So, in 2020, as opposed to 1920 where the public square might have been
enough, having access to something like Google or YouTube should be enforced
as a legal right unless explicitly cut off by court order (as opposed by
corporate whim).

Even economically, if you think about it, think how Google search ranking for
example (or lack thereof) could sink companies globally at the whim of Google
operators.

~~~
moises_silva
>>> Content hosting platforms I want them to merely do what's legal.

Well, one could argue that's what they're doing. Unless we make it illegal for
them to make moral choices over content, they're merely doing what's legal and
what they perceive in their best interest.

But, ok, I do kind of get your point and it seems you care just when it comes
to content, as you still want them to make moral decisions in other areas
(employee compensation). I guess that's what I find different from my
expectations (I'm not from the USA btw). I am fine with them making moral
decisions on the content hosted in their platforms, even if that means
sometimes they may censor my own point of view, it's their platform after all
and I can still host my content on my own. I know, is not where "everyone" is,
but perhaps that's a good thing, if people is missing that content they can
get it elsewhere. Perhaps is that I don't perceive Twitter or Cloudflare as
essential as say, ISPs. I'd have an issue with an ISP snooping and making
moral choices about what traffic to allow beyond what the law requires because
is not like I can build my own internet as an alternative.

>>> So, in 2020, as opposed to 1920 where the public square might have been
enough, having access to something like Google or YouTube should be enforced
as a legal right unless explicitly cut off by court order (as opposed by
corporate whim).

That's a good point and my view is somewhat swayed now, or at least I
understand that point of view better. I usually don't pay attention to twitter
or facebook which somewhat bias me to deem them as unimportant social noise.

>>> Even economically, if you think about it, think how Google search ranking
for example (or lack thereof) could sink companies globally at the whim of
Google operators.

Search (content discovery, not content hosting) I do find more inclined to
believe should be pretty much impartial (beyond perhaps top results that are
clearly marked as "sponsored"), but instead of expecting google doing the
right thing, we should push clear legislation about it.

------
Anthony-G
Before reading this story, I had been expecting that perhaps somebody had
complained about article content and that the author had been banned from
Medium so I was surprised to discover that this story was about the author
being shadow-banned.

Shadow-banning is a useful tool for online forums but many moderators would
usually considered it to be the last in a series of escalating steps that
might be used for particularly troublesome users who ignore moderator
warnings.

I wouldn't have expected a blogging platform to implement it and certainly not
at the whim of an automatic spam filter. Even worse, its algorithm does not
seem to take into account past behaviour or a positive reputation of the user
before banning them; _all articles_ are hidden due to a false positive in just
one of them.

------
bakedbeanz
Not defending Medium here, but I do have an issue with this point:

> The web is meant for free speech. Your content shouldn’t be jailed for being
> controversial.

You mentioned your profile was taken offline after being mistakenly caught in
their spam filter. Shouldn't spam blocking be a basic function of a publishing
site? Obviously in a perfect world there wouldn't be false positives, but
sometimes these things happen. Your content wasn't banned for being
"controversial".

~~~
qayxc
Straight from their Terms of Service [1]:

    
    
      We can remove any content you post for any reason.
    

They also clarify that they have rules [2] that users need to follow. Also
government takedown requests might be followed without even notifying you if
the law prevents them from doing so.

So even if it wasn't a mistake, takedowns may still happen for whatever
reasons and you need to take this into account before you start using the
platform.

I really don't understand why some people complain about services doing
exactly what's stated "on the box".

[1] [https://policy.medium.com/medium-terms-of-
service-9db0094a1e...](https://policy.medium.com/medium-terms-of-
service-9db0094a1e0f)

[2] [https://policy.medium.com/medium-
rules-30e5502c4eb4](https://policy.medium.com/medium-rules-30e5502c4eb4)

------
OhSoHumble
Something that wasn't mentioned is that there is a reading cap for Medium
articles if the user doesn't pay. Something that is frustrating is finding
some technical documentation for a project on Medium and being hit with "you
hit your reading cap of 5 stories..." and having to open up an incognito
window.

That is dumb. I shouldn't have to pay money to get around a pay wall for a
project's technical documentation.

~~~
gwd
> I shouldn't have to pay money to get around a pay wall for a project's
> technical documentation.

But that's on the project, not Medium; and if they want to be paid for the
work that goes into their documentation, what's the problem?

I mean, seriously, Medium is $5/month, for loads of advertising-free content.
Why not just subscribe?

~~~
bleuarff
Has the project team any say in this, or is it just Medium doing their thing?

~~~
tonystubblebine
Every article behind the paywall on Medium is there because the author put it
there.

------
semicolonandson
I'm working with a team that provides booking systems for COVID-19 testing.
The software is legit, works with some of the nation's best labs, and has even
been used by the government.

Seems like the kind of software that Apple/Google might be inclined to fast-
track given the current state of affairs?

Wrong.

Neither Apple nor Google approved the apps, so the team spent 8 weeks going
back and forth with them about what seemed (to me at least) like totally
ineffectual, CYA security theatre.

Instead we ported the code to a web-app on a domain we owned and could start
helping people with symptoms immediately.

Own your platform.

~~~
mrtksn
Your point is valid but in the case of App Store and Google play, they require
to be an institution with an authority if you are building anything about the
COVID-19 pandemic. So the route would be to partner with a medical institution
that is reputable enough for Apple and Google.

From their perspective, it makas sence because otherwise the App Analytics
would pick up that there is this thing called coronavirus and is popular so
from business perspective they should target it and the search results would
degrade. Then the analytics would pick up that testing positive on Covid-19
test app has a good conversation rate and people would make apps where you
test positive(or whatever goes. conspiracy theories, denialists - anything
that brings eyeballs). This is essentially what happened with the News market.
Analytics showed what kind of news people like and publishers made the news
that people demand. They simply wrote the articles that brought most eyeballs.

When you own the platform, then it is your responsibility to spread it. Good
luck with that, you can be a good citizen or conspiracy theorist and it is all
fine until you succeed. If you are the "undesirable" and you actually succeed
then people will start talking how to block your platform. You can be
undesirable by telling the truth(journalism) or invoke trouble(shootings,
racism and so on).

Owning the platform is not going to be the solution, it will simply delay the
consequences.

------
cube00
There's something dishonest about your profile appearing normal only to
yourself, while the rest of the world is getting a 404. If you're suspended,
fine, but tell the user, but why the need to hide this from them?

~~~
jasonkester
Indeed. It seems shady until you realize why sites do this. Probably the only
way to truly understand is to run a site with user generated content for a
while.

There will be people using your site that just need to go away. They're
different from your typical pharmaceutical spammer because they genuinely
think they're not doing anything wrong. If you tell them to stop posting
affiliate links to timeshares, they'll put themselves in this box of "banned
for doing nothing wrong", and simply start a new account posting affiliate
links to timeshares in a slightly different way that hopefully will get around
your algorithm.

The worst part is that after enough time, and enough tries, you'l have given
them (and the pharmaceutical spammers as well) detailed instructions for how
to circumvent your spam protection. All every step of this does is add more
work to you to run your site for the people who you want to have there.

So the simplest and most effective thing you can do is make those people think
they have succeeded. Let them promote their timeshares (and v1agra) to their
heart's content. Just don't show anybody but them.

Real people have friends who read their blog and will point this out if it
happens by mistake, and you have a "fix" button in your admin console to hit a
few times a year.

Trust me. Run your own blog host for a few months and you'll implement this
too.

~~~
mindfulhack
Appreciate that perspective, makes sense. But it's still fundamentally
injurious to the other person, and furthermore, in an uneven power dynamic.
Also, your power doesn't automatically mean you're right. I wonder how to
solve it.

Maybe shadow banning is quite fair and necessary and the answer is for people
to educate themselves about it and go to other places where it won't happen to
them. #rollyourown

These matters are not simple at all. I'm still trying to decide on whether Fb
ultimately is a 'public square' vs. a 'private publisher', as is basically the
whole world.

~~~
pferde
No, power - within your own platform - absolutely means that you're right -
again, within your own platform.

------
xpe
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."

~~~
cm2187
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.

~~~
detaro
But most of them are easily replaced if they go bad. Even domains are of
course technically rented, but your own domain is among the most stable
identifiers we have on the internet - people owning domains over decades is
commonplace.

If my domain registrar, my DNS provider, my hosting company, ... go "bad" I
can just move and my readers won't notice. Even if you are on hosted wordpress
etc, you can archive your site as is and move, preserving the URLs. That's not
the case with Medium etc where your content lives under their domain.

~~~
hunter2_
Reclaiming a domain from a registrar that has "gone bad" actually sounds
pretty difficult. If they were so inclined, they could refuse to give you the
transfer code, and they could renew it so it doesn't expire.

------
jjcm
Another thing I would echo here is that you don't necessarily need a CMS /
WYSIWYG editor to run a great blog. A tiny script that dynamically compiles
your markdown flavour of choice and has a nginx reverse proxy in front of it
will be able to survive a reddit frontpage hit on a $5/mo vps, and it will be
_dead simple_ to set up.

If you're looking to move off Medium, give it a try. If anyone is interested
I'm happy to share the mini server I wrote to compile pug aka jade / stylus,
which is what I use for my blog.

~~~
cube00
Add a free tiered CDN in front of that and you're certainly good to survive
any spike in traffic.

~~~
saagarjha
You can also try one of the many providers that will host your static site for
you for free, like GitHub Pages.

~~~
jjcm
True, but the point of the article was to avoid centralized providers as you
may inadvertently be shadowbanned. I have much more faith/trust in Github than
Medium, but nonetheless it still suffers algorithmic approaches to content.

~~~
saagarjha
GitHub is a merely a host, not a platform. You can switch off the former in an
instant, but the latter locks you in.

------
throwawaysea
As a paying subscriber, I lost faith in Medium during COVID, when they started
censoring and deleting posts that analyzed COVID data and information. Those
speculative amateur posts often resulted in findings that went against the
prevailing public health guidance or scientific consensus. While many were
wrong, many of those early amateur posts ended up being correct on some counts
as well. I feel they deserved a place for the conversation to be held. I was
put off by the seemingly arbitrary choices medium made in deleting content,
especially considering the WHO and other agencies have been wrong on COVID
repeatedly - amateur speculation and reporting was _necessary_.

A democratized internet requires that we exercise that democratic right and
retain control over our content, rather than handing control to new platform
masters.

~~~
bishalb
It's really sad. Not just medium but Facebook, twitter, YouTube all blocked
such content/posts and tried to stifle the content creators. YouTube even
permanently banned many channels. I didn't know medium did the same.

------
magnusmagnusson
Medium and Substack signal crashed from 'might contain something useful' to 'I
avoid even opening the links' fairly fast. Precisely because they're not home
for ideas, but just a sad self-marketing attempt.

------
wishinghand
Kirby and other similar PHP based flat file CMS software is super easy to run.
If I were to get back into making sites for people, I'd just use Kirby,
Bulma/Tailwind, and Alpine.js.

It can run on shared hosts like Siteground, Lithium, Green Geeks, Hostgator,
as well as VPS platforms like Digital Ocean. The admin interface for making
new posts is great, separating it from static site generators. It uses a
modified Markdown called Kirbytext which is additive. If you write pure
Markdown you'll see it rendered as expected.

No database means no worrying about getting hacked (at least in terms of SQL
injection).

If you don't want to build it yourself, there's themes for sale too, despite
how niche Kirby is. My own blog is a Kirby theme I bought because I knew if I
built it myself, I'd never finish.

~~~
the_pwner224
I run a site on Grav, which appears to be very similar to Kirby but FOSS, with
plenty of free themes and plugins (though the base installation is pretty
complete). It's super easy to install compared to WordPress, and I've never
had luck getting NodeJS-based software like Ghost to work and then stay
working for a long time. For a personal blog it has all the features you would
need, while being pretty simple.

 _But_ , software like Grav and presumably also Kirby are very much not easy
to run for 'normal' people. They would need to secure hosting without getting
overwhelmed with the technical details or all the upselling that providers try
to do, then install the software which is 'easy' but not 'click this button
and you're done' easy, and of course also deal with domains and DNS etc. A
hosted solution - even if you have to pay for it - is the only practical
solution for normal people.

That said, for the type of people that read HN I would highly recommend Grav.
Installation is easy, it has a nice web-based interface for administration and
writing posts, it is fast, and it is _not_ the latest trendy static site
generator. It is a boring PHP application that will probably keep working for
20 years with no changes required - but is still actively maintained and will
be for the foreseeable future.

~~~
wishinghand
I agree it's not as easy as starting a wordpress.com site or even a self
hosted Wordpress site if the host has a 1 click builder, but if a user can
figure out basic PHP hosting, they can run Kirby (and presumably Grav).

Grav's advantage over Kirby is that it's totally FOSS, but I encountered Kirby
first and have a more thorough understanding of how it works. The maintainers
and community are also quite helpful as well as super lenient about unlicensed
usage.

------
everfree
It seems to me that the author completely missed Medium's import tool in
his/her "mirror your blog" section. The tool is specifically made to prevent
SEO issues when syndicating content from your own blog.

[https://help.medium.com/hc/en-
us/articles/214550207-Import-a...](https://help.medium.com/hc/en-
us/articles/214550207-Import-a-post)

There's no SEO risk as the author alludes to. This is Medium's tool for
dealing with that.

~~~
wmeredith
The key part of this functionality is, "Imported stories will automatically
apply a canonical URL referencing the original source material." Taken from
the content of that page.

------
moonchild
> Google might add negative signals for your website, thinking that you copy-
> pasted an article from Medium on your blog.

Can you get around this by posting the medium version later than the one on
your own website? (Obviously, G crawls medium more frequently; so say, maybe,
a week later.)

~~~
Jaruzel
I was going to ask a similar Q, but I'll hitch my comment to yours... (and
give you an upvote as well)

To get around Google thinking that your personal hosted version is a copy, can
you pepper the medium version with links back to your domain/blog ? Would that
help ?

~~~
everfree
Just use their import tool, it's designed specifically for that purpose.

[https://help.medium.com/hc/en-
us/articles/214550207-Import-a...](https://help.medium.com/hc/en-
us/articles/214550207-Import-a-post)

It sets up a canonical tag and backdates your post to prevent just that from
happening.

~~~
kuu
That makes sense

------
krtkush
The number of large (and hip) software companies which host their blogs on
medium is mind boggling. With the amount of time they spend reinventing the
wheels, one would think they would spend some time setting up their own blog.

Also, why do people host their tech tutorials on Medium? I have few of my own
and always put them up on my own github pages blog. It's not too difficult.

~~~
quattrofan
My irony alarm just went off...

~~~
krtkush
Because I mentioned GitHub? The thing is GitHub is just a wrapper. All my data
is still with me and I can switch to GitLab in about a hours time. Also,
unlike Medium, GitHub does not put a quota on number of free articles per
month nor does it cover 1/4th of the page with a permanent pop-up asking the
reader to sign up.

I feel GitHub pages and Medium are not the same thing.

~~~
marcosdumay
> The thing is GitHub is just a wrapper.

If you own the domain name, yes. Otherwise, no.

~~~
krtkush
In my case, I do own the domain name.

------
PaulHoule
Given that medium is so choked with content marketing and parodies of content
marketing, it's amazing you.can have a post zapped by the spam filter.

I mean, it is hard to find something on medium which isn't some variant of
'hiring is broken' sponsored by triplebyte (let's really break it!)

Mulesoft getting bought by Salesforce has given us some respite from 'does
your content marketing strategy need an app strategy?' They never ask 'what
are the two things you need to build a business around an api?' or 'what are
the two features you never get from an app management platform?' because those
two questions have the same answer.

------
fastball
If you're in the "medium is still suitable for some use cases" camp, I think
you should just use Ghost[1] instead.

\- great for casual blogging

\- very cheap to host

\- monetization tools built-in

[1] [https://ghost.org/](https://ghost.org/)

~~~
bishalb
Or plain old WordPress

~~~
fastball
WordPress is very slow (objectively) and much more complex to get started with
(subjectively). Also the security model of WP isn't great (PHP/MySQL/etc).

~~~
bishalb
Much more complex to get started with compared to what Ghost? Really? Almost
all shared hosting services offer a single click install of WordPress, I don't
think ghost is anywhere as simple as that to install(for a non tech savvy
user)

WordPress has improved a lot in the past few years in terms of security,
"worpdress is insecure" is an old meme. Sure if you just go on installing any
plugin under the sun, there can be a risk. But the stock installation of
WordPress with just a handful of reputable plugins should be good. Much of the
slowness comes from the oodles of plugins that people install.

For speed, there are many great and free caching plugins available for
WordPress which can considerably speed up your site.

~~~
johnonolan
"Ghost isn't easy to install" is an equally old meme which is trivial to
disprove :) Self-hosting _any_ CMS requires a degree of tech-savvy.

Here's a comparison of Ghost vs WP in terms of time to install:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMKNgV1gTHg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMKNgV1gTHg)

~~~
fastball
Helpful that you have a video ready to go!

------
Animats
_Also, Google might add negative signals for your website, thinking that you
copy-pasted an article from Medium on your blog._

Google never did get serious about provenance. They scrape so often that they
should be able to tell who's the original. I've seen Wikipedia copy sites
outrank the real Wikipedia.

As a backup, you should be able to submit a hash to a time-stamping notary
service and have Google pick up on that.

------
winter_blue
The most valuable gem of advise in this article is at the end:

> Update: As pointed out in the comments section, Medium has an import tool
> which allows you to add a canonical link from your Medium post to your
> original blog post.

> This process ensures that Google does not think of your blog post as a
> duplicate. Thanks to Nicolas and Matthias for this correction.

This is an excellent way to do things. Publish on your blog first, _and then
mirror the same post(s) on Medium_.

------
thn-gap
I've been thinking recently on the idea of writing for the sake of sharing (be
it a short story, some thoughts, or any tutorial), but I like anonymity. For
this, I'd like to not host my content, but maybe have some fake profile on
social media, and share my writings, which could be hosted on Telegram's
telegra.ph. Is there a better platform for my use case, or a reason not to use
telegra.ph?

~~~
retor
Thought about the same for a while. I didn’t compare them much, but I was
leaning towards write.as. Maybe something to check out.

------
alexnewman
Turns out creating a blog , backed by ipfs, and cached by cloudflare is pretty
easy. [http://github.com/posix4e/blog](http://github.com/posix4e/blog) ->
[http://www.wuli.nu/](http://www.wuli.nu/)

Feel free to steal my example

------
TaylorAlexander
I’ve been running a self hosted instance of ghost for years now (link in my
profile). It’s great! My stuff just sits there, never at risk of a policy
change banning my work. I can write whatever I want. The URLs are easily
memorized and I hand them out all the time.

I don’t run analytics. I have no idea how many people have read my writing.
I’m okay with that. I actually thought nobody reads my site but one day a
piece I had just published hit hacker news, so I guess somebody is watching. I
keep the content so I can refer people to it, and as a record of my thinking
over time. I share the links when relevant in an online discussion.

I highly recommend it! I should say, I was inspired by Paul Graham and his
essays. Just keeping it simple and putting good ideas out there. Oh and I
licensed all my work as CC0, so anyone can copy it for any purpose.

------
rapnie
Quite interesting is that there are a bunch of blogging softwares that not
only publish to the web, but also federate with Mastodon and other fediverse
applications.

Most well-known is WriteFreely.org (written in Go) that can be a good
replacement for Medium (hosted version is Write.as that comes with a paid
subscription). But there are also new, more specialized apps such as FediReads
and Readlebee that are Amazon Goodreads alternatives.

Here's a list of blogging apps in various stages of development:

[https://git.feneas.org/feneas/fediverse/-/wikis/watchlist-
fo...](https://git.feneas.org/feneas/fediverse/-/wikis/watchlist-for-
activitypub-apps#blog-publishing-and-reading-apps)

------
realusername
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.

~~~
jjcm
I actually found it to be not that terrible in comparison to some other sites
that are out there today. Medium loads 17 scripts totalling about 2.4MB of js.
For comparison, reddit loads 78 scripts totalling 7.5 MB.

Is it heavy for such a simple blog? Yes absolutely. Is it heavy for a modern
React app? Not really. I think the crux of it is that we often rely too much
on heavy frameworks for React even for simple things. It's definitely an
antipattern in development today.

~~~
manquer
For an app like medium, client side react with that many dependencies is
perhaps not the right approach in the first place?

Server Side Rendering(react or w/o react) would be a better way to do serve
their content and have the added benefit support users who have no js support
(noScript , terminal based browsers, screen readers? etc)

------
replyifuagree
Medium has a terrible reputation amongst readers. That's enough for me to not
publish there.

------
iamacyborg
Netlify makes it fairly trivial for almost anyone with moderately techy chops
to host their own static sites, so that's where I host my sites.

Jekyll amd similar static site generators are more than good enough for 99% of
blog sites anyone might want to build.

------
li4ick
There's one thing I want to scream at every front-end developer out there:
STOP OPENING POPUPS WHEN I'M SELECTING TEXT!

Again: STOP OPENING POPUPS WHEN I'M SELECTING TEXT!

~~~
vmception
but the a/b test says you keep doing it and stay on the site longer so you
must love it

~~~
tomjen3
The more I see things like this, the more I think the original sin of this
century was analytics, rather than ads.

~~~
dredmorbius
Ads drive analytics / analytics feed ads.

~~~
tomjen3
But ads have been a thing since the Egyptians started to write sales documents
on Papyrus, but it is only in the last 20 years or so analytics have changed
the game: I suspect that I might have been slightly of in the previous
comment, maybe it is only when analytics can note the effect of individual
customers actions that they matter.

~~~
dredmorbius
The major development of advertising is notably more recent:

[https://archive.org/stream/commercialismjou00holtuoft#page/n...](https://archive.org/stream/commercialismjou00holtuoft#page/n7/mode/2up)

AdTech creates measurement problems not experienced in mass advertising, newer
yet:

[https://idlewords.com/2015/11/the_advertising_bubble.htm](https://idlewords.com/2015/11/the_advertising_bubble.htm)

------
neya
What I find funny in this post is it goes to great lengths to encourage you to
stay off walled gardens and then there's this:

"The web is meant for free speech. Your content shouldn’t be jailed for being
controversial."

<Followed by a Tweet Icon>

~~~
tonystubblebine
Right. You are getting at the nuance of how this conversation is a shade off.

People who like Medium almost always say they like it for the distribution.

So people who say you should host your own blog should be more clear about
where you get distribution from.

Almost always, you are going to get distribution by trying to siphon readers
away from other walled gardens. But you are almost always working with these
massive systems you don't control. Google SEO, Twitter & FB followers, etc.

And even if you manage to siphon away a user and get their email address, you
still have to deal with GMail's spam filters. You're never really in control,
that's a pipe dream.

------
zerop
I stopped clicking on links which have medium.com domain. It will be a premium
article. Medium is choosing anything under premium payment wall, without
explicit consent from Author. We need an alternate to this platform

~~~
tonystubblebine
Medium does have consent from the author and the vast majority of page views
are going to authors who know a lot about what they are doing. I think that's
worth noting. A Medium link is most likely to an article that exists to be
behind the paywall because the author thought they could make some money and
get good distribution that way. A lot of these articles wouldn't exist
otherwise.

~~~
zerop
I too used to think so and that's how it was earlier. Check again.

For example, other day I found one post on Netflix tech blog was also behind
paywall.. check posts from famous tech blogs of companies, you would find some
of them behind paywall. I don't think big corporates want to make money from
their tech blogs.

~~~
tonystubblebine
The deal is for two things, money and distribution. It's possible that people
are choosing to put something behind the paywall for distribution. But I agree
that's unlikely in Netflix's case. But I'm 100% certain that the Netflix is
the one who put it behind the paywall by having that option checked at the
time of publication.

------
syntaxing
I'm surprised how little people run their own blog, especially since it's
free, minus domain name cost. I run my own blog (shameless plug:
[https://www.powu3.com/](https://www.powu3.com/)) for free (thanks Netlify!)
and it was relatively easy to setup, and this is coming from someone with a
hardware background rather than software. I guess the biggest downside is that
it's harder to get visibility and clicks from search engines. I know a lot of
people use github pages which is fully free and a great alternative.

------
rolandtshen
I've been building Imprint ([https://imprint.to](https://imprint.to)) these
past few months to provide a better home for ideas. It's centralized like
Medium, but has a focus on content ownership. You can use custom domains, own
your content through our policies, and know that your content won't be altered
or removed spontaneously. We also promise that in the event of the platform
shutting down, we'll notify you to export your posts 3 months in advance.

------
illuminea
I totally agree. It's so important to own as much of your content on the web
as possible. That's why CMSs like WordPress are a great solution. I know WP
has lots of issues, and that's why we created Strattic: static and headless
publishing for WordPress websites so you can easily and quickly create
content, but not worry about security and performance.
[https://www.strattic.com](https://www.strattic.com)

------
XCSme
I already had a PHP site so I wanted an easy way to integrate a blog in my
site. I ended up creating a micro-blogging library[0], which just renders
markdown as blog posts. The advantage is that there is no build step, you only
write markdown files (VSCode has live-preview by default for markdown) and you
get easy versioning as markdown is just plain text. [0]:
[https://github.com/Cristy94/markdown-
blog](https://github.com/Cristy94/markdown-blog)

------
Alir3z4
I have gone through the same phase myself. Not only Medium but many other
platforms as well.

The algo based recommendation that force feed you the content that "they"
think you should read and constant trackers all over the place that profiles
everyone with heavy ads scripts with tons of js css files just to read a
simple text from someone.

I've built what I had in mind (_sort of_) for myself and many others.

Anyone wants to start a blog, without the headache of self hosting or
maintenance without ads and sneaky business model is welcome gonevis.com

~~~
non-entity
> The algo based recommendation that force feed you the content that "they"
> think you should read.

This is probably one of the things I hate most about the modern web. There are
a ton of situations where I want raw, un-autofiltered results from something
and I can't get it.

------
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.

~~~
saagarjha
> You can't add any CTA button, popup window, widget, or anything that can
> help you to justify your blog exsistance.

FWIW, I utterly abhor these when reading blogs. Consider “goodwill” as being
an abstract benefit of your blog existing.

------
graton
Medium is the reason that I installed Cookie AutoDelete [0]. I finally got
tired of doing shift-F9 and deleting cookies :)

Now that I have been using Cookie AutoDelete and enabling it so that it does
delete cookies automatically (and whitelisting the sites I care about) it has
been very nice.

[0] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-
autode...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookie-autodelete/)

------
cblconfederate
Quietly use blogspot. The Original Blog platform still works, doesn't go about
censoring people and it's not the hip thing to do (which is a good thing(TM)).

------
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.

------
saagarjha
The button to tweet about free speech on the web is a bit ironic ;) But yes,
stay off of Medium. And I’m not just saying it, I walk the talk myself for my
blog: it’s really not that hard and I can confirm that it “works”, at least
for my definition of “works” (read: minimal fees–just a domain
registration–per year, highly flexible but not a massive pain to use, attracts
readers of some sort…)

------
auganov
I've had Medium do this to me and in server logs for my homepage I found hits
from a Medium owned subnet preceded by hits from a Slack robot. Then some more
Medium requests with a referrer from my other social media. Definitely not
automated.

It seems like Medium manually reviews any story (and user!) that crosses some
threshold of traction.

~~~
tonystubblebine
Had you marked your article for distribution, i.e. behind the paywall?

If so, then yes, they have a curation team that is manually reviewing articles
for extra distribution across their network. As a publishing partner, I have a
copy of their guidelines--mostly stuff that can be done at scale. And mostly
what they are doing is trying to find the right topics to feature the article
in.

I'm wouldn't be surprised if they have some sort of prioritization system to
deal with the volume of articles along the lines of what you describe. If an
article is getting traction and hasn't been reviewed, then do it quick.

~~~
auganov
No, just a standard article. Unless that's the default then I wouldn't know.
Didn't seem to be behind a paywall.

~~~
tonystubblebine
The decision is pretty prominently placed on the publish modal. I think you'd
probably notice.

------
dudeabides
Jeremy Howard had a good post about this earlier this year. I haven't tried it
yet, but it seems like a reasonable way to setup your own blog.

[https://www.fast.ai/2020/01/16/fast_template/](https://www.fast.ai/2020/01/16/fast_template/)

------
tmaly
I use Hugo now for my blog. But I do have to admit that Medium's mobile app is
really great for writing posts.

In an ideal world, I would have that interface to write my markdown on the
phone. It would encourage me to write more. I could start a draft of something
when a thought occurs to me and finish it up later at home.

------
paulie_a
Unless you are in HR and need to participate in the circle jerk why both with
medium? You might as well use literally any other platform including blogger.
No one is reading anyways. Medium used to have interesting content once upon a
time. They are a player in that industry like all is a player in internet
access.

~~~
yobi-ponti
Same reason people put up with YouTube's nonsense. It is where the money is
at. I agree with this post for the average blogger, but if your end game is to
build a career off of writing I, medium kinda becomes a necessary evil.

------
young_unixer
[SSG recommendation request]

I want an SSG with the following requirements:

\- If it requires a dev env, it must be node. I don't want to install Ruby, Go
or any other system-wide thing.

\- Support for (simple) custom CSS written from scratch must be first class
citizen, and not buried in a dark corner of the docs.

\- RSS feed.

Thanks for your suggestions

------
input_sh
I've been thinking of mirroring the first few paragraphs on Medium and then
adding something like "visit my own blog to read the rest of the article",
basically (ab)using Medium as an acquisition channel.

Do you know of anyone that did something similar?

------
radiKal07
This is exactly why I started working on
[https://panakit.com](https://panakit.com)

I want to provide the same easy way to publish your blog while at the same
time using your own custom domain and own your platform.

~~~
pseingatl
Tried to login, timed out.

------
willvarfar
For tech-minded people, a static site generator and github-pages is a great
solution. Zero cost. Zero ads etc. Not likely to change or go away. Easy to
move to paid for hosting Or GitHub’s next competitor if that is ever needed
etc.

~~~
kuu
I guess that the issue here could be GitHub policies, maybe they don't like
your post 'because reasons' and you're in the same situation as with Medium (I
understand it's not as common).

The ideal case is that you own the platform.

~~~
nickcotter
No doubt, but it's easier to move if that happens.

------
krn
> A lot of companies like Basecamp and Spotify executed this idea with their
> company blogs.

> They started with a Medium publication, and when they gained traction on
> their content, they moved to their own hosted blogs.

This is false. Basecamp's blog "Signal v Noise" is much older than Medium
itself, and their transition perfectly illustrates what Medium has become[1]:

> Three years ago we embraced an exciting new publishing platform called
> Medium. It felt like a new start for a writing community, and we benefitted
> immensely from the boost in reach and readership those early days brought.
> But alas it was not to last.

> When we moved over, Medium was all about attracting big blogs and other
> publishers. This was going to be a new space for a new time where publishers
> could find a home. And it was. For a while.

> These days Medium is focused on their membership offering, though. Trying to
> aggregate writing from many sources and sell a broad subscription on top of
> that. And it’s a neat model, and it’s wonderful to see Medium try something
> different. But it’s not for us, and it’s not for Signal v Noise.

[...]

> So now we’re back on the indie trail. The new blog is powered by our friends
> at WordPress, and the new amazing design is courtesy of our in-house
> designer Adam Stoddard.

> Thanks to the fact that we kept our own domain when we moved to Medium, all
> the articles and links still work. The pieces have simply swapped the Medium
> styling for our own look. (Although, sad to say, Medium didn’t let us export
> the comments, so those are gone ).

[1] [https://m.signalvnoise.com/signal-v-noise-exits-
medium/](https://m.signalvnoise.com/signal-v-noise-exits-medium/)

------
StavrosK
If you want a site with a minimum amount of hassle, just clone the repo I made
for this site:

[https://quicksite.stavros.io/](https://quicksite.stavros.io/)

------
tijuco2
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.

------
dredmorbius
This is the principle behind Indieweb's POSSE:

[https://indieweb.org/POSSE](https://indieweb.org/POSSE)

------
DataScienceGuy
If your goal is reach and monetization, Medium (or substack) is the best
option out there. You don't get any reads by hosting your blog by yourself.

------
hatmatrix
As a side note, anyone know of any good CSS templates? I use org-mode to
generate HTML content but have not found a lot of options.

------
geniium
As soon as I hit a medium post, I hit the Pocket icon and switch to The pocket
viewer.

------
dmje
HN truism: sooner or later all threads default to one about static CMS systems

------
scoot_718
I don't even read things on Medium, I always open them on outline

------
scotthtaylor
Bundle, unbundle, rinse, repeat.

Tech's virtuous cycle will forever run...

~~~
cube00
I've learnt the hard way about the risks of bundling that I didn't even
consider a decade ago, no chance I'll be going back to that matter how "do no
evil" the next company that comes along claims to be.

------
rsj_hn
Anyone recommend a good RSS reader with the following characteristics:

    
    
      * integrated into the browser (an extension is OK)
    
      * automatically downloads feeds and gives notifications of new text
    
      * keyword searchable

------
jeremiahlee
Another reason: today I clicked on a Netflix Engineering blog post I saw on
LinkedIn. Medium blocked me from reading and said I had to subscribe because I
had read too many articles.

Netflix has the skill and money to operate its own blog without Medium putting
up a paywall over its content.

------
classics2
Is it really so hard to spin up an aws machine with a plain old lamp stack to
serve this kind of content? Its incredibly cheap and simple to do.

~~~
ethiclub
Yes, for many (most?) non-technical folk.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge)

~~~
nickcotter
Even if you are well-versed in how to do it, it can still be a time sink you
may not be able to afford.

~~~
ethiclub
And you wouldn't even know that another solution necessarily existed.

And you wouldn't necessarily know where to start.

And you would have the mental hurdles of "where do I start", "who do I listen
to", etc.

------
MangoCoffee
"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 Zuby because transgender activist mock
Zuby and Zuby reply with "Ok, dude".

the cancel culture in the West is destroying people from speaking freely.

the cancel culture in the West is the reason why you must own your own
content. there are many people on the internet who doesn't agree with cancel
culture and want to see your content but due to powerful tech company like
Twitter. they can't see it because Twitter act like a publisher but don't want
the responsibities that come with it.

the current Western society is in a very sad state.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to
say it" \- Evelyn Beatrice Hall

~~~
DanBC
> Twitter ban Zuby

No, they didn't.

[https://twitter.com/ZubyMusic](https://twitter.com/ZubyMusic)

~~~
thinkingemote
Some platforms seem to increasingly use "ban" to mean "suspension" *

Zuby was suspended: [https://summit.news/2020/02/27/rapper-zuby-suspended-by-
twit...](https://summit.news/2020/02/27/rapper-zuby-suspended-by-twitter-for-
tweeting-ok-dude-to-a-woman/)

* Twitch.tv for example, never use "suspension" but "ban" for everything from a 24hr suspension through a month suspension to an indefinite permanent ban.

------
trekrich
dont put anything on medium that you are not prepared to have deleted with no
warning.

