Really weird that a very obvious choice, Medium, did not make the cut. I'm quite aware of how unpopular it is here on HN, but that's mostly a meme.
It doesn't cost anything and there's no ads. Even linking your domain to it used to be free (sadly no longer true). It has a very decent writing experience and the out of the box design is simple but effective. It has a reasonable amount of customization. It has wide support for apps.
It's part of a network so you get functionality like claps, a comment system, followers, the like. Blogging with a "social network" built-in. It has newsletter support.
I think that's a sweet deal for such low (or even zero) costs. Ultimately I'd think your writing is what the value of your blog is, not the behind-the-scenes technical tinkering. Unless that really is your thing.
Should you be paranoid about Medium going under, there's an export option.
Note that I'm the kind of person that wrote my own blogging software in the early 2000s. Tinkered and managed it that way for well over a decade.
I've given up on it. It's time wasted. Nobody cares about your blog design, it's hard enough for anybody to care about the actual text in today's landscape. Hence, pick your battles, keep it simple.
I feel like a lot of people here have moved from medium to sub stack. Also medium just sort of naturally gatekeeps your articles by eventually forcing potential readers to login to medium.
I agree. Some time back I just stopped clicking a link if it was to Medium. Maybe they've changed their practices but because of that past experience I wouldn't know and as a result don't read content that's on Medium.
It's not even in their list of things on might have done in the past, they seem to not regard anything other than self-hosting as a blog, which seems a bit archaic. Building a blog shouldn't be about learning a new framework it should be about writing
The parent is probably talking about the medium paywall, which is usually bypassed by getting it archived on the internet archive. The archive link to the post is preferable to the medium link to the post, at least for me.
It doesn't cost anything and there's no ads. Even linking your domain to it used to be free (sadly no longer true). It has a very decent writing experience and the out of the box design is simple but effective. It has a reasonable amount of customization. It has wide support for apps.
It's part of a network so you get functionality like claps, a comment system, followers, the like. Blogging with a "social network" built-in. It has newsletter support.
I think that's a sweet deal for such low (or even zero) costs. Ultimately I'd think your writing is what the value of your blog is, not the behind-the-scenes technical tinkering. Unless that really is your thing.
Should you be paranoid about Medium going under, there's an export option.
Note that I'm the kind of person that wrote my own blogging software in the early 2000s. Tinkered and managed it that way for well over a decade.
I've given up on it. It's time wasted. Nobody cares about your blog design, it's hard enough for anybody to care about the actual text in today's landscape. Hence, pick your battles, keep it simple.