[HN Gopher] No More Medium - Build Your Own Site (2019)
___________________________________________________________________
No More Medium - Build Your Own Site (2019)
Author : mooreds
Score : 624 points
Date : 2021-09-11 16:47 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nomedium.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (nomedium.dev)
| werber wrote:
| If you're going to write about how terrible a platform is, make
| sure your presenting it in a responsive way. This is a pain to
| use on my phone
| christophilus wrote:
| Reads fine on my tiny old smartphone. It seems responsive (as
| in responsive design). Also, looks fine in reader mode.
|
| What problems did you have with it?
| werber wrote:
| I'm on an iPhone 12 mini and half the page is horizontal
| scrolling and it jitters as I scroll down the page.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Test it with a feature-complete browser and see how it
| compares to Safari, then.
| techrat wrote:
| Looks like it may just be you. No issues on a cheap $300 no
| name Android device. Renders and scrolls fine.
| Zababa wrote:
| Also, the contrast is not great and the letters are really
| thin. I'm not a fan of Medium but the text on it is usually
| readable without effort.
| dehrmann wrote:
| That's only true if you're selling your platform as an
| alternative.
| ogogmad wrote:
| Which of these problems can be fixed by using an ad blocker?
| [deleted]
| Havoc wrote:
| I'm still trying to understand why anyone remotely technical is
| using it at all
|
| Setting up a blog isn't exactly rocket science
| GordonS wrote:
| Medium is low-friction, aids discoverability, and makes
| monetisation easy - those are pretty compelling reasons
| compared to setting up your own blog.
| [deleted]
| ibdf wrote:
| I stopped using Medium when I realized you can read more content
| for free if you don't login. Once you are logged in the paywall
| comes up way more often and the you get bombarded with email by
| default.
| [deleted]
| rejectfinite wrote:
| Maybe the "boomer" in me is showing (Im 30) but why did people
| move to medium from blogspot.com or wordpress.com?
|
| Seems like medium just looks like a normal blog to me with a
| fancy theme. Most posts are mostly text, so a blogspot/blogger
| site would do fine for free right?
|
| I remember when most bloglinks where .blogspot.com links.
|
| Wordpress seems to host blogs for free too, with paid plans for
| more features. The free plan actually seems great.
| https://wordpress.com/pricing/?compare=1#lpc-pricing
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Medium allows making money from blog posts, similar to how you
| can make money on YouTube. It also does some work in helping
| you gain readership by allowing helping people discover other
| blogs in ads and in a special section on their website.
|
| As a writer, Medium is probably the best medium to blog on. As
| a reader, it's probably one of the worst popular ones.
| dSebastien wrote:
| I've been blogging for a number of years; most of the time on my
| own domain (dsebastien.net), but without being overly serious
| about it.
|
| After a long pause, I started writing again. I decided to give
| Medium a try, as it had gained a lot of popularity. It was
| refreshing compared to my old custom Wordpress theme. I was also
| curious about the possibility of monetizing my content
|
| In 2019 I put more effort into blogging on Medium and my posts
| started gaining some traction on the platform. For about a year,
| I didn't get much ROI ($0-3 per month), but then, probably as I
| approached it better, it started to compound. Since 2020 I get
| $50-100 per month from Medium and sometimes much more ($300-700
| with outliers).
|
| Still, I concur with the points made in the post. Medium has many
| downsides, the first of which being the paywall, which is getting
| more and more aggressive. Also, I realized that I was just
| hurting my personal brand by not bringing visitors directly on my
| own domain.
|
| That's why I've changed my approach this year. I've rebooted my
| own Website and publish there first. Still, I continue to post my
| articles on Medium as well, behind their paywall, but with the
| canonical URL pointing to my blog so as not to hurt SEO as much.
| I think that this is a safer long-term approach and it gives me
| the best of both worlds; I can still monetize (even if less than
| before) while keeping full ownershop and better SEO towards my
| domain.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Medium seems to be old news, Substack is apparently the new
| hotness. Seeing more interesting content showing up at the
| latter. Not sure substack doesn't have a lot of the same issues
| Medium has, though.
|
| As an aside: I don't understand why Google hasn't updated Blogger
| to compete with Medium (and now Substack). Seems like some Google
| employees could get a good review/promotion by doing that. With
| all the stuff Google changes (often for no good reason), Blogger
| seems to just remain stuck in the amber of ~2005.
| rejectfinite wrote:
| >Blogger seems to just remain stuck in the amber of ~2005.
|
| I dont blog myself, but what would be needed to be added to
| Blogger? A blog is just header image + text anyway right?
|
| Meduim blogs are mostly just text right? Is it just the nice
| theme? Ads? Payment?
| egypturnash wrote:
| hahaha god if only, Blogger is a giant blob of javascript
| that constantly gets in the way of reading stuff.
| tpxl wrote:
| Substack tends to annoy you for your mail rather obtrusively.
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| Substack doesn't seem great either.
|
| https://twitter.com/Codie_Sanchez/status/1408473091727052804...
| Veen wrote:
| Substack is still in the "investors throwing money at them"
| phase. Medium is in the "squeezing every possible source of
| revenue to justify that investment" phase.
| kevincox wrote:
| Sounds like a great time to take advantage of all that VC
| funding then. I'm sure there will be a new blog platform
| burning investor money by the time Substack starts to squeeze
| their users.
| crackercrews wrote:
| Does anyone know if Substack is making more money than Medium
| was at this point? From the outside looking in, it sure seems
| that way.
| JohnFen wrote:
| (From the POV of a reader, not an author)
|
| Substack has its share of warts, but is much more acceptable
| than Medium.
| Macha wrote:
| For now.
|
| Medium was originally praised for no bullshit presentation
| too.
|
| Imgur is another example, founded as the "no BS" image host
| as counter to what photobucket/imageshack has become, it's
| now pretty much at the state those two were at imgur's
| founding
| shatteredspace wrote:
| Being 'stuck' in 2005 is exactly why I use Blogger for my blog
| posts. I don't post to get eyeballs, I don't have monetization
| turned on. I post (about mainly tech) for my future self, so
| that if I run into the same weird error or need to do the same
| thing again, I have it documented online; a place that I can
| access from any device with an internet connection. If others
| find my posts helpful, that's fantastic, but it's secondary.
|
| I wanted a platform that I could log into, that was fast, non-
| intrusive, that I could link my own domain to, and that was
| 'stuck' in 2005. I don't need anything shiny and honestly, for
| most things people blog about, a site that exists in circa 2005
| is more than enough.
| rejectfinite wrote:
| As someone in IT tier 1/2/3 support, I and many peers would
| not be able to do our jobs without blogs like yours. If only
| people knew how many times we just google/ddg an error and
| end up on a blog with a fix.
|
| Your service is appreciated o7
| jyriand wrote:
| Substack is great if you already have followers. Medium is
| great when you are starting out and looking for readers.
| agumonkey wrote:
| at that point it will be faster to list the nice platforms
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Is substack any better? It seems to be the new hotness.
| cpach wrote:
| I currently subscribe to one Substack newsletter and so far I
| like it.
|
| Even if Substack would tank I would still be able to read
| those articles in my e-mail client.
|
| However, I'm quite selective with subscribing to newsletters.
| So if others are the same, that could be a limit on the
| potential growth of Substack.
| 3r8Oltr0ziouVDM wrote:
| I think Medium works better with JS disabled, I don't remember
| seeing any paywalls there since I started to browse with JS
| disabled by default.
| Schnurpel wrote:
| I have nothing to say about Medium, but if someone indeed can
| make $1K with a couple of articles about an arcane subject, then
| by all means do it.
|
| You will not make the money it costs to run the web server of
| your own blog by writing a couple of posts a month.
|
| To make some money, you will need several posts per day, on a hot
| subject, and you will have to promote it all day long.
|
| I was editor-in-chief of a large, well-known website for many
| years, and I know what I am talking about.
|
| We paid our contributors $25 a piece, that's how much it was
| worth. Later on, we could get away with paying nothing.
|
| I know people with well-read and well-maintained websites who
| received $20 a month from Google Ads.
|
| For a website to receive some traction, you must be at it for
| years, and after a few years, pay per clicks will be lower.
|
| Websites grow with abandon, but advertising budgets don't. So the
| advertising dollars are split into smaller, and smaller pieces.
|
| Serious advertising money goes into microtargeting, no more
| target groups, but target persons. For that, you must be a
| Facebook et al.
|
| Basically, the times of making serious money with writing are
| over. I have many well-known journalist friends, and they hurt.
| Their numbers dwindle.
|
| I was lucky, I made serious money decades ago by writing - as a
| copywriter for ad agencies. Even that doesn't pay as royally as
| it used to. But to make a living with writing, you need to "go to
| the dark side," into advertising, PR, best to the PR department
| of a large company with long-term job security and health
| insurance.
|
| Forget the easy money with your own website. Use it to build your
| brand, to advertise yourself, to put together a portfolio of your
| work, an interactive business card.
|
| But forget the easy money with your own website.
| cpuguy83 wrote:
| Medium has a terrific writing experience. Click a button and
| start writing. Don't have to think about the title, what the file
| name will be, none of that. No friction. That's why I've used it
| in the past.
|
| I have a Hey account and have tried Hey World, and it's... ok.
| Formatting sucks. No discoverability. Just meh.
|
| I haven't written on Medium in a couple do years now. Last time I
| did, though, the writer had the option to have the article be
| part of the paywall or not. I do not know if that is still
| optional, but if so maybe anger is misdirected at Medium for this
| (or you could just pay for the content...).
| minimaxir wrote:
| If you're a developer comfortable with working with Markdown, I
| strongly recommend Hugo as this page recommends, and deploying it
| with something like GitHub Pages.
|
| For themes I recommend Wowchemy (https://wowchemy.com/), which
| has many features necessary for a modern technical blog albeit a
| bit of a learning curve as a result.
| rvz wrote:
| Simply telling people to _' Stop Using ABC'_ and _' Switch to
| XYZ'_ which the latter is more user unfriendly probably makes
| them stay and continue using ABC.
|
| They will only move to another platform if it makes them more
| money and is easier to setup or migrate. Like Substack.
| puddingforears wrote:
| I was getting so many paywalled medium articles in Google
| searches that I removed them with uBlock:
|
| google. _##.g:has(a[href_ ="http://medium.com"])
|
| If they aren't paywalled, they'll hijack ctrl+c in code snippets
| and give you the option to tweet the snippet. Like what the
| actual fuck, I'll find it elsewhere if I don't figure it out on
| my own.
| question002 wrote:
| I pointing out there's no way anyone is making 1k for 2-4
| articles a month and flat out got an immediate ban here. Lol this
| is hilarious. Try it!
|
| Show any evidence people make money doing this, it a lie, it's
| like $400 max.
| Ekaros wrote:
| 30 minutes for alternative? It should be 5 minutes tops if not
| that for you to host content on ready made platform.
|
| It feels that Medium is a product that could be disturbed. Basic
| WYSIG editor and easy upload. Then again I wonder what would be
| business model for such product. And would it just end up being
| what Medium is doing...
| tomtheelder wrote:
| Yeah Medium was great at first. All the issues now are driven
| by monetization.
| MikeDelta wrote:
| Did this lead to a lower quality of articles, as it was less
| about having to say something and more about saying (obvious)
| things about popular topics in order to make money? Or did
| Medium find a good way of taking the best of both worlds?
|
| (I always skip Medium articles, so I cannot judge for myself)
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| "All the issues now are driven by monetization"
|
| 5000 years of human civilization summed up in one sentence.
| hmlongco wrote:
| Writes an individual who strongly suggests Hugo and who just
| happens to create Hugo themes.
| approxim8ion wrote:
| > Writes an individual who strongly suggests Hugo
|
| Why is this a problem? I should hope that someone asking me to
| drop a particular piece of software has a strong argument for
| using another, and actually believes in it enough to use it
| themselves.
|
| > just happens to create Hugo themes.
|
| from their github, I see 3 Hugo themes out of 64 projects. They
| aren't even paid themes. If you are trying to reveal some kind
| of conflict of interest, it isn't very convincing.
| cryptica wrote:
| I like Medium. These days I rely on them to get my news since I
| can't rely on mainstream media. Articles written by regular
| people sharing their thoughts is the best way to know what's
| going on in the world.
|
| I feel that Medium's recommendation algorithm is one of the least
| biased ones of all social websites. Maybe that's why some people
| are advocating to stop using it?
|
| Without medium, I'd be left with only Reddit's /r/conspiracy as
| my source of world news.
| tarkin2 wrote:
| I ignore articles on medium.com
|
| Custom-domain medium-hosted sites are a real pain.
|
| Medium blogs must have the worst experience in the web.
|
| I'd need to go out of my way to make a website that bad.
|
| I automatically devalue the authors on that side, obviously
| unfairly.
|
| Someone on this site coined the phrase "Medium developers", which
| sticks in my mind.
| jyriand wrote:
| Why not write on medium and have a Hugo blog? You can publish the
| same post on both places and link Medium readers to your blog.
| trinovantes wrote:
| There's so much low quality blog spam out of medium that all my
| Google searches automatically get -medium.com suffix
| bckr wrote:
| How did you set that up?
| trinovantes wrote:
| Firefox lets you set up custom search engines with bookmarks'
| keyword and %s replacement variable
|
| So I have a bookmark to "https://www.google.com/search?q=%s+-
| medium.com+-quora.com+-a..." and "g" as keyword
|
| When I type "g center div" in my search bar, I will get a
| search page for "center div" with all of my excluded sites
| henvic wrote:
| I've previously used Medium to post articles I wrote, and decided
| to move my blog to Hugo about two years ago, and I definitely
| love it.
| sunny--tech wrote:
| There are two sides to this, though we often only hear one.
|
| For readers who aren't subscribed to Medium, it can be annoying.
| You go to read an article, and if that article is monetized, you
| see a banner to sign up. Plenty of people leave immediately.
|
| Now let me tell why, as a writer, I still use Medium and will
| continue for the time being.
|
| I only post 2-4 articles on there per month. But even then, I'm
| seeing ~50K views per month and this month I'm on track to earn
| $1000.
|
| To see those same results on my own blog, I would need to learn a
| lot about SEO, affiliate marketing, and have a large Twitter
| following to direct traffic to my blog. I would also need to
| maintain it myself.
|
| Sure, I might have a higher chance of going viral on HN, but how
| likely is that even anyway?
|
| As a full-time developer with a newborn who's just looking to
| earn some fun money, Medium is perfect. I write, submit to a
| publication, and they take care of the rest.
|
| People may say, "I'm not going to read your posts on Medium." My
| answer is: okay? Can't make everyone happy. But I'm still getting
| 50K views from people who do want to read them, and I'm okay with
| that.
|
| The other point to make is that Medium only pays for views/reads
| from other Medium members, so I don't necessarily care if I go
| viral on HN or not. If I really cared about going viral, I would
| just post my article to something like dev.to and then submit it
| to HN.
|
| If you're just looking to write and get views/go viral and don't
| care about money, then it might not make sense to post to Medium.
| But if you want to earn some money with relatively little effort,
| Medium is hard to beat.
|
| Edit: Here's proof of my claims for people questioning them
| (https://medium.com/@SunnyB/proof-of-medium-
| stats-700c2b0b638...). Note: it is a Medium link to an unlisted
| post. Didn't know where else to put it.
| TheCyberBasics wrote:
| "I only post 2-4 articles on there per month. But even then,
| I'm seeing ~50K views per month and this month I'm on track to
| earn $1000."
|
| That's impressive. I'm clearly writing the wrong articles haha.
| question000 wrote:
| Oh oh that's because he's 100% lying. Just trying to draw
| more people into the scam. Hacker news is such a naive place
| sometimes.
| BrS96bVxXBLzf5B wrote:
| What makes you say this and what would lying bring them?
| Looking at their profile clearly shows they've been an
| active Medium poster for the last year and a half, and
| probably don't have a deeper association with the platform
| than that authorship.
| sunny--tech wrote:
| Proof: https://medium.com/@SunnyB/proof-of-medium-
| stats-700c2b0b638...
| austinkhale wrote:
| I have an old Medium account with the partner program
| activated. It doesn't earn a ton but I'm averaging ~ $10
| per 2,500 views. 50k => $1,000 seems steep, but maybe their
| category is worth more. In addition, you can earn more for
| new reader referrals.
| sunny--tech wrote:
| There's likely multiple reasons for this. One of my
| gripes with Medium is it's lack of transparency for how
| writers earn money.
|
| If your views are coming from mainly external sources,
| Medium won't pay you for that.
|
| Also, Medium pays more for more recent stories. Probably
| as an incentive to keep posting more articles. 1 hour of
| readership for a brand new story could get you $2-5. For
| an older story, it'll probably only earn you less than a
| dollar.
| nkrisc wrote:
| That's quite the accusation. What makes you say that?
| dang wrote:
| Attacking another user like that will get you banned here.
| Please read the rules and stick to them:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Edit: you've been posting flamewar comments repeatedly, and
| that's not what this site is for, so I've banned the
| account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to
| email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that
| you'll follow the rules in the future.
| question000 wrote:
| Are you saying I'm lying now? You're attacking me and
| should be banned.
|
| It's laughable.
| flemhans wrote:
| I didn't even know there was a paid subscription. Just always
| closed the tab when bugged
| reph2097 wrote:
| This, plus I downvote on Reddit and tell Google News to show
| me less medium.
| sunny--tech wrote:
| Yeah you can sign up for free, but to read all the
| paywall/monetized articles, you need to pay $5 per month.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| Would you mind linking to your medium blog?
| sunny--tech wrote:
| https://medium.com/@SunnyB
|
| I didn't want people to think I was just writing this to get
| attention which is why I didn't originally post it.
|
| Here's proof to the claims I made:
| https://medium.com/@SunnyB/proof-of-medium-
| stats-700c2b0b638...
| JohnFen wrote:
| As a reader rather than a writer, I find Medium to be so bad that
| I stopped going there entirely. If it's only on Medium, it
| doesn't exist to me.
| DantesKite wrote:
| I'm surprised they didn't mention Substack.
|
| It's not optimal for discovery, but rewards writers far better
| than Medium can.
|
| It's telling that so many people go to Substack once they're
| kicked out of somewhere.
|
| If you want to build your brand or an audience, Substack is the
| place to go.
| uncomputation wrote:
| Substack is better for building an audience for sure, but I
| think Medium is better for less "known" authors. You would
| probably go to Substack for someone you personally trust/value,
| for analysis. Medium is more for evergreen content, casual
| reading, less "current events" stuff.
| aasasd wrote:
| I have trouble taking advice like that from a page on which
| hovering over links ramps up browser's CPU usage to over 100% (of
| a core).
| aasasd wrote:
| Also, kinda ironic that the page links to an article from 2017
| called 'Why Medium Doesn't Matter Anymore', while here we are
| complaining how we still hate having to deal with it.
| polote wrote:
| Every nights I read through the hackernews posts of the day which
| didn't reach the front page for my newsletter. Every time I click
| on a medium posts and that I click "previous" the page freeze
| during 1-2 seconds.
|
| Therefore I have a ban on Medium posts. When medium.com is in the
| URL it is automatically discarded, unfortunately they offer white
| label domain so I happen to click on some of those links.
|
| Also I didn't do stats about it, but if you want to blog about
| something and do it on Medium you have a much lower chance to be
| featured on HN (not talking about others forum ). Choose wisely.
| HN is not the center of the world but there are only a few places
| that can offer 50k visits
| judge2020 wrote:
| > unfortunately they offer white label domain
|
| Looks like they just brought this functionality back as well:
|
| https://blog.medium.com/custom-domains-are-back-2dee29560d59
| laurent92 wrote:
| Tip: Add this line to /etc/hosts (after finding the exact
| domain names they use):
|
| 127.0.0.1 medium.com w3schools.org
| codazoda wrote:
| This doesn't work for me because I forget that I redirected a
| specific host and end up troubleshooting my network.
| Especially if a few medium articles showed up at the same
| time, months after I blocked it.
| SirYandi wrote:
| Maybe setup a custom 404 locally on a pi or something and
| redirect to that instead?
| JohnFen wrote:
| > unfortunately they offer white label domain
|
| I always feel a bit tricked when I encounter that, myself.
| maxmax_ wrote:
| Hah, it's you! Thanks for doing that effort, I enjoy every day
| when your newsletter hits my mailbox! But I can only agree with
| you, the Medium experience is really one of the worst you can
| have when reading a blog.
| setzeus wrote:
| Happily, just pay me the equal ~$100s/Mo, the distribution of
| Publications, the killer SEO rankings from Medium (always first
| page) & the 1000s of click-throughs to my personal site.
| sails wrote:
| Medium blocking copy/paste and instead prompting tweets of the
| highlighted text must be one the most infuriating things I
| encounter on the web. The _only_ thing making it bearable is
| FireFox reader mode.
| aromatt wrote:
| I just noticed that almost all of the URLs in this contain UTMs.
|
| So as we read and discuss this post, are we deliberating on a
| valuable piece of insight shared by a peer? Or are we primarily
| participating in a set of promotional campaigns?
| bitshiter wrote:
| Medium feels like it's the Experts-Exchange of article
| publishing, it's well indexed and comes up in search results, but
| every time I open a link and get begged to signup I immediately
| close it.
|
| Hosting on Hugo/Netlify is kind of a good solution, but I feel
| like there needs to be a completely free, managed version.
| Setting up Hugo/Netlify is mostly simple, but it's one of those
| things when you don't want to deal with updating your local tech
| stack vs a managed service.
|
| I feel like Substack is slightly better, although it still does
| lean towards "subscription" first services (but at least it's per
| user / patronage type model)
| enraged_camel wrote:
| >> Medium feels like it's the Experts-Exchange of article
| publishing
|
| Experts-Exchange, without the experts.
| [deleted]
| can16358p wrote:
| Did experts-exchange ever have any real experts anyway?
| Schnurpel wrote:
| The business is going to a subscription model, because blogging
| for ads simply doesn't pay enough anymore, it has long stopped
| doing so. All the big newspapers, Bloomberg, now even Reuters
| go subscription, because ads simply doesn't pay enough anymore.
| And we dream about big advertising money for our fledgling
| blog? Forget it. If you want to make money, sell your body, not
| your brain, go Onlyfans.
| rapnie wrote:
| WriteFreely [0] may be an alternative. It allows you to self-
| host, or choose a hosting package. It also has a companion with
| paid subscription that is built on top of it, Write.as [1]. The
| nice thing is that all server instances are federated, and are
| gradually more deeply integrated with other Fediverse apps.
|
| [0] https://write.as/writefreely
|
| [1] https://write.as
| freeopinion wrote:
| There is a lot out there that is bad. What is good?
| Elidrake24 wrote:
| Medium, like YouTube, is a platform for creators to make money
| with little friction while also providing exposure that is
| difficult to build on their own. That, above all, is why
| platforms like this are successful.
| crackercrews wrote:
| Compared to YouTube, Medium is not "successful".
| shados wrote:
| Correct. They failed at monetization without pissing off
| their users. Partly because they did it earlier. Youtube was
| ubiquitous by the time they started pushing intrusive ads, so
| people either dealt with it, paid, or used an adblocker
| instead of just leaving.
|
| That doesn't change that the "idea" behind Medium is good and
| that there's a market for a blogging platform that gives
| authors easy access to a large audience.
| crackercrews wrote:
| Good ideas aren't worth much if the business model doesn't
| work. They've raised over $100M and have pivoted multiple
| times. At some point you have to ask whether the idea is
| not a feasible one.
|
| Alternate possibility: the core idea is a good one, but
| they raised too much money. Now they have to live up to an
| impossibly-high valuation and can't just be a blogging
| platform.
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| "Good ideas aren't worth much if the business model
| doesn't work"
|
| I'm reminded of the dot com bubble in the late 90s.
| aoleinik wrote:
| I write on medium [1] and I don't think switching to a stand
| alone website would be good for me at all.
|
| Medium has "publications" where my work gets sent out to hundreds
| of readers that are reading about a topic, not necessarily from
| me - I'm not notable at all in the field so I'd have a rather
| hard time getting people to subscribe to __me__.
|
| If I were to make my own website, I'd lose a ton of
| discoverability.
|
| Plus, the monetization on medium is fantastic. Nowhere else would
| I get that return per view - I'm currently averaging around 25k
| views a month with a $500 return.
|
| I do have my gripes with the platform, but in my case, Medium is
| the worst platform for writing besides all the rest. [1]
| https://anth-oleinik.medium.com/
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Wow, that's a significant return. I used to have a blog in
| which I wrote technical content, and the traffic was
| considerably more than 25,000 per month. I only spent money on
| that, never made a cent.
|
| It did help me get jobs, but I can't say with certainty that it
| got me better jobs than I would have without it. I've done far
| better since without a blog attached to my name.
|
| Anyway, that's a lot of money to make off of something I
| associated with costing money.
| cpach wrote:
| I'm not a fan of Medium but I do admit that those are
| compelling arguments.
| [deleted]
| hmlongco wrote:
| I'm with aoleinik. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far,
| away, I had a stand-alone blog that--to put it bluntly--no
| one visited.
|
| Today I put the same type of content on Medium and get
| thousands of readers on almost each and every article. So
| much, in fact, that I've consistently been in the top 1,000
| creators on Medium several months running.
|
| Yes, I understand that I'm simply part of their platform. but
| that's the same for anyone who attempts to create monetized
| content on Medium, YouTube, Twitch, or any of the many other
| platforms that pay creators for content.
|
| As far as I can tell, articles and sites like the one above
| exist because some people simply believe that they should
| never have to pay for content, and that everything should be
| free.
|
| Fair enough. And, that being the case, those people are never
| going to see my work. Also fair.
|
| But Medium drives enough people to my content to make the
| exchange work for me. Plus it provides enough incentive to
| get me off my butt and create things that I probably won't
| have created otherwise.
|
| If anyone who reads this doesn't like Medium. Fine. If you
| want to go elsewhere... also fine.
|
| But thus far, the value proposition works for me, and it
| apparently also works for all of the people who read my
| articles and stories and tutorials each and every day.
|
| To them, thanks.
| jonahx wrote:
| Do you give up rights to your work by posting on Medium?
|
| Also, do you have a link to your work?
| epicureanideal wrote:
| Sounds like someone should create a discoverability and
| curation service for independent blogs, independently of the
| hosting platform.
| dmamills wrote:
| And we shall call it:
|
| Real
|
| Simple
|
| Syndication
| deepakkarki wrote:
| RSS is as you mentioned, syndication. Not discovery.
|
| I guess apps like feedly have RSS recommendations, but
| that's not the same thing.
| imbnwa wrote:
| RSS was only part of the solution, the other half... was
| Google Reader: the homepage's "Suggested" section learned
| what you were starring/following and provided new content.
| I found tons of new stuff to read with that.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| It was called Technorati.
| smoldesu wrote:
| For what it's worth, you're currently losing _my_
| discoverability by using a platform that I don 't. Me (and
| many, many other people) will get redirected to your site, see
| a big intrusive banner on our screen, and leave. It doesn't
| matter if you were about to disclose the panacea or secrets to
| life, there's simply no writing on Medium that's worth the
| royal asspain of stepping through your digital metal detector.
|
| You're increasing the amount of complexity in your reader's
| stack to reduce the complexity of your stack. Much like how
| nobody clicks the 'Reddit is better in the app!' button, you
| should be conscious that most people nope-out when they click a
| link and don't get your article.
| shados wrote:
| Yes, they're losing yours, but that's a small cost to pay vs
| NO ONE discovering their stuff.
|
| Basically what this comes down to is that there's a market
| for something like Medium's earlier days, back when it was
| decent. Someone just needs to figure out a better way to
| monetize it, while still having the mind share Medium used to
| have.
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| Ah yes the monetisation. That's always been a problem on
| the internet.
|
| Yes you can reach millions of people but not earn a single
| EUR. Many such cases! Newspapers almost went broke because
| of the digital future until they decided to do something
| completely anti web 2.0: PAYWALL IT. And it worked
| newspapers were saved.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Isn't the big banner only if the author opted into paid
| reads?
| Zababa wrote:
| > Much like how nobody clicks the 'Reddit is better in the
| app!' button, you should be conscious that most people nope-
| out when they click a link and don't get your article.
|
| I think you should be the one conscious that you're a small
| minority and not representing "most people" at all.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Your observation is worth nothing because you also aren't
| reading his personal blog, or wherever he would publish
| instead. You don't even try to suggest other places you'd
| happily read.
| Retric wrote:
| Except he is reading HN which will link to personal blogs.
|
| I am not saying write good context and they will find you,
| but Medium isn't that great. Only ~9% of the writers made
| over $100 in a month, and the top earner fluctuates between
| 20 and 30k/month. You basically get a handful of people
| making a living and most people getting little more than
| free hosting.
| Uehreka wrote:
| If you have to tell people out loud "you're losing my
| business!" it usually means they didn't even notice when they
| did.
| cortesoft wrote:
| How can he lose your discoverability when he never had it?
| Sure, you won't read his blog now, but you had no way of
| discovering it before.
|
| You can't lose something you didn't have.
| approxim8ion wrote:
| We are literally on a forum where they could have
| discovered OP's blog before, now, or after.
| sicromoft wrote:
| TIL there's no way of discovering content outside of
| Medium.
| rhizome31 wrote:
| Content can be discovered using a search engine or through
| a link from another website.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| If the authors of other websites link to it. But how do
| _they_ discover it?
| smoldesu wrote:
| Word of mouth. If your writing is good, it spreads
| itself.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Someone has to discover it before it can spread by word
| of mouth.
| Talanes wrote:
| If they're clicking on a link, discoverability is done.
| It's been discovered.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Clicking on a link from where? Sure, if you have popular
| places linking to you, you don't need medium's discovery
| egypturnash wrote:
| Apparently adding this hoop is filtering for a lot more
| readers who are willing to pay, though. You're probably not
| willing to pay. I'm not either. From a financial point of
| view, both of our opinions on the Medium paywall are worth
| absolutely nothing.
|
| There are other ways to make money on the internet,
| personally I like the "post shit everywhere for free, have a
| Patreon" model, which is giving me similar numbers of around
| $1k/mo for not much energy put into promotion, with a little
| bit more every month as my patrons grow. But some people like
| putting up paywalls, and it's their choice to do that with
| whatever they're creating.
| soheil wrote:
| $20 CPM is indeed very high. Just a cursory look at your blog I
| think 25k page views/mo is actually pretty low given the number
| of likes/user interactions you get on your posts and how
| frequently you post. I don't know how Medium is counting a view
| but usually 3 views translate to a unique user for blogs. I
| wouldn't be surprised if you counted your views with something
| like Google Analytics and saw numbers 10x more views than what
| Medium is reporting. If true then even a $10 CPM would put you
| in $2,500/mo range.
| jefftk wrote:
| $20 CPM is very high for advertising, but it's not all that
| high for a paywall that is working well, no?
| cloudking wrote:
| How do you get your posts into publications?
| crackercrews wrote:
| Step 1: put them behind Medium's paywall.
|
| Step 2: I don't know what Step 2 is because I'm unwilling to
| do Step 1.
| [deleted]
| chokeartist wrote:
| Top lel. You a bright future in Executive Consulting.
| aoleinik wrote:
| There are content curators for the publications -
| essentially, you just submit them and if your article is good
| enough they'll publish it.
| can16358p wrote:
| That "free 3 articles" is REALLY annoying. We are actually
| building a content-oriented app and Medium is the #1 example of
| what we DON'T wanna become on all the meetings. Having a
| completely subscribed platform? Fine. Giving some stuff free then
| asking for money (Which in my case switching to Private
| Browsing/Incognito): annoying. It might look nice for authors,
| but at the end of the day it's the readers who enable that
| monetization. If you can't make readers happy, they'll eventually
| go away no matter how compelling the platform looks for the
| authors. And I frankly want to see quality content move to other
| platforms that deserve to be monetized and doesn't annoy readers.
| omarhaneef wrote:
| 1. Medium is not competing for people willing to spend 30 min
| playing with the command line to get a blog up. (Note)
|
| 2. Discovery! Medium is about getting people to read your blog.
|
| (Note) there is an obvious opportunity to create a medium like
| experience that lets people blog using Hugo and Netlify. I open
| an app, connect to my account (GitHub pages, or Netlify) type my
| article and post.
|
| P.s I tried to put an asterisk instead of Note but it ended up
| putting everything in between in italics.
| shados wrote:
| > Discovery! Medium is about getting people to read your blog.
|
| This. I feel like as a reader, medium is becoming pretty
| useless, with the gate screens and stuff. But back when I was
| using it a lot, I published my stuff on Medium because it gave
| me eyeballs, the same way I put videos on youtube now as
| opposed to hosting them myself (even if it was easy to do).
|
| If I put a post on my own blog, I'll be lucky to get 20 people
| looking at it. Last time I posted something on Medium, it went
| viral and got several hundred thousand views, including from
| this very website (and I hadn't even submitted it to Hacker
| News).
|
| That's hard to beat. If someone else wants to make something
| similar, to help blog authors get the same thing publishing to
| Youtube or Spotify get you, that isn't Medium, go right ahead.
| I'll certainly consider your product.
| gompertz wrote:
| Hugo user here. I just wanted to reinforce your message - I
| sometimes think about posting on Medium instead, for "hits"...
| When I crave attention; but as you said, those readers likely
| aren't my target audience anyhow. For those thinking of using
| Hugo (or any static site generator), do it!
| ghoward wrote:
| Yes, do it! Hugo is great because it's fast. [1]
|
| Fast software is the best software. [2] (Comments: [3])
|
| Speed is the killer feature. [4] (Comments: [5])
|
| Slow software is an opportunity for competitors. [6]
|
| [1]: https://gavinhoward.com/2019/12/performance-matters-
| jekyll-v...
|
| [2]: https://craigmod.com/essays/fast_software/
|
| [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20517144
|
| [4]: https://bdickason.com/posts/speed-is-the-killer-feature/
|
| [5]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26312516
|
| [6]: https://fabiensanglard.net/silicone/index.html
| Lammy wrote:
| Hugo is great until you want to do something it doesn't
| support. The performance and single-binary nature of Hugo
| are really cool, but I ended up sticking with Jekyll for
| its robust plugins API despite the trade-offs in speed and
| complexity (dealing with gem/bundler, maybe even rbenv,
| etc)
| ghoward wrote:
| That makes sense; there's always a tradeoff. For me, it
| was a lot of work to switch from Jekyll to Hugo, and for
| some, that's not worth it.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| Similarly, it took me about 2 hours to set up a personal
| Jekyll website with a deployment script to a S3 static
| website cached by cloud front. I usually pay less than $1 per
| month in AWS fees.
|
| No trackers, no JavaScript, no third party assets. If you can
| get away with a static website it is definitely the way to go
| and the tools are out there and easy to use.
| strokirk wrote:
| Don't you also need to pay for a domain name?
| approxim8ion wrote:
| Not if you use GitHub Pages, GitLab Pages, Netlify,
| Neocities etc etc. They all offer the same kind of deal
| substack and wordpress do, ie an author.platformname.com
| kind of domain.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| Yes, I have a route 53 domain name for approx $14/yr
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| Check out http://getpublii.com, it is quite similar to the app
| you're describing. (it's not Hugo-based, but similarly outputs
| a static site with easy upload options, including to GitHub
| Pages or Netlify, and is free and open-source)
| jonsen wrote:
| Pps. * Just put a space after asterix.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| The correct syntax is \\*, so you can write ***lala*** or
| \\\\* or something.
| mattowen_uk wrote:
| I noticed early on in with HN that the culture for
| references when commenting is to use [1]
|
| --
|
| [1] so I just simply adopted it also.
| anamexis wrote:
| I think what you're describing is Forestry:
| https://forestry.io/
| lamontcg wrote:
| > (Note) there is an obvious opportunity to create a medium
| like experience that lets people blog using Hugo and Netlify. I
| open an app, connect to my account (GitHub pages, or Netlify)
| type my article and post.
|
| This is what I'd really like. All these alternatives assume you
| want to use your editor in the terminal and git and CI
| publication process. I want to edit markdown text in a web
| browser and click a button to see how its rendered and then go
| back to the editor without changing contexts at all.
|
| The editor/git/CI model feels too much like actual fucking
| $dayjob work. Writing is already a difficult enough process --
| lets turn it into software development while we're at it! I
| need to worry more about dependency management of my plugins
| while I'm trying to write and publish something.
|
| Medium is worse though, its very annoying.
| wikibob wrote:
| This is exactly what I want.
|
| A modern Wordpress. But with strict guide rails and
| simplicity.
|
| Does such a thing exist?
|
| I've seen ghost but it's quite expensive for personal use.
| ssb1 wrote:
| Well there is https://www.netlifycms.org/
| stonewareslord wrote:
| > Please stop using Medium > Switch to Hugo and Netlify (https
| //netlify
| com/?utm_source=nomedium&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=nomedium)
|
| I really wish people would disclose when they're profiting from a
| link click. Am I misunderstanding something or is this website
| profiting in some way here? There's no referral code but it has a
| utm source/campaign
| codingdave wrote:
| Those are tracking, not monetization.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Why would the author be interested in helping netlify track
| where the clicks were coming from unless they got something
| out of it?
| maccolgan wrote:
| Doesn't utm_campaign imply that Netlify has an active
| marketing campaign against Medium (nomedium) and this is
| contributing to that?
| jayzalowitz wrote:
| It implies it, but may not mean it.
| grupthink wrote:
| I have 2 major problems with medium:
|
| 1) Something on their page causes my browser to use up 100% CPU.
| Navigating away or using readermode fixes the problem. I suspect
| they have a CSS animation on an element.
|
| 2) After loading the page, wait a few minutes, the page reloads
| by itself. 4 times out of 5, it will fail to reload itself and
| display "500 Oops, we couldn't load that article" or something
| like that.
|
| Utterly shit experience. It seems like I'm the only person
| experiencing these problems because I can't find any discussion
| online about these really annoying problems.
| medium_burrito wrote:
| You are not the only person; it's miserable.
|
| Let me add (3), the editor interface, possibly the most
| infuriatingly bad software I've had to use (for work) in the
| last few years. And I am routinely exposed to awful software.
| darksaints wrote:
| I've noticed the CPU thing too...when I am on a medium page, my
| phone will slow to a crawl and heat up like crazy. My only
| guess so far is that they're trying to crowdsource some crypto
| mining.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| I declined to renew my Medium subscription a couple days ago. I
| had generally stopped visiting the site ages ago.
|
| My problem is not with Medium's paywall. In principle, I'm 100%
| fine with being asked to pay to read something that someone else
| wrote. $5 per month doesn't bother me; I would gladly give even
| more if I felt that it was supporting the production of high-
| quality media. I already give many times that much to my local
| NPR and PBS stations.
|
| My problem with Medium is the pay-per-read model. They have
| eliminated the actual ads, but left in place all of the incentive
| structures favoring the production of low-value clickbait
| articles.
|
| That said, I don't want to harsh on writers for choosing Medium.
| Sure, they could use Hugo to slap together a blog. But, in order
| to get paid, they would probably end up needing to drop in Google
| ads, and end up with much the same situation that exists with
| Medium, only perhaps minus the access to an audience, and plus a
| bunch of other annoying ad network crap.
| GordonS wrote:
| > They have eliminated the actual ads, but left in place all of
| the incentive structures favoring the production of low-value
| clickbait articles.
|
| This is my biggest beef with Medium - which isn't really a
| problem with Medium itself, but how certain "authors" are
| (ab)using it.
|
| It's quite often that I'll be googling for something, and end
| up at a Medium article - but it's 50/50 whether it's a good
| article, or a single paragraph of basic information that's been
| largely copy/pasted from somewhere else.
|
| There _are_ lots of good articles on Medium, but the large
| quantity of articles that are basically SEO spam have me
| clicking through from Google less and less these days.
| dang wrote:
| Past threads:
|
| _No Medium - Build Your Own Site, Please_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19602238 - April 2019 (11
| comments)
|
| _No Medium_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19442873 -
| March 2019 (3 comments)
| amelius wrote:
| Medium is just YouTube, but for written text.
|
| Perhaps someone can develop a "medium-dl" to make reading less
| painful.
| crackercrews wrote:
| There are plenty of reader apps that will do this for any type
| of article/blog post.
| marban wrote:
| Here we go again.
|
| People posting on Medium (or any other "platform") are seeking
| distribution, not a 200ms rendering performance or owning their
| namespace.
|
| Also, nothing wrong with paying for content -- I'm a Medium
| subscriber, among many other publications.
|
| Let's discuss again when a major NYT columnist leaves for the
| sake of publishing with Hugo.
| neither_color wrote:
| Theyre doing that with substack, which is way less naggy than
| medium.
| cpach wrote:
| Honest question: Do columnists leave NYT for Medium? (Perhaps
| they do, but if so I have failed to notice it.)
| marban wrote:
| I was referring to the NYT as an equiv. distro platform.
| Veen wrote:
| Except it isn't the same at all. The NYT is an edited
| publication, not a distribution platform.
| soniman wrote:
| https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/
| zimpenfish wrote:
| I mean, he "resigned under pressure"[1] over his behaviour
| and comments - it's not like he voluntarily upped and left
| the NYT for Medium.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/01/business/donald-
| mcneil-ne...
| tomc1985 wrote:
| > Also, nothing wrong with paying for content -- I'm a Medium
| subscriber, among many other publications.
|
| There is when your publishing medium gatekeeps you for no other
| reason than to drive _its own_ metrics. (Also nice humblebrag?)
|
| Medium is scum, I hope it burns
| marban wrote:
| What's wrong with paying for text? I don't own a TV and I
| assume most people are splurging more on their cable in a
| single month than s/o paying for five or six web
| publications.
| senko wrote:
| Do you get paid by Medium for your posts that others need
| to pay to read? (Edited: misread that you're also an author
| there).
|
| In my book, it's wrong to pay if original authors don't get
| that payment.
| lovegoblin wrote:
| > In my book, it's wrong to pay if original authors don't
| get that payment.
|
| Wait, are you under the impression that the authors _don
| 't_ get paid?
| senko wrote:
| It is my understanding that Medium will nag visitors to
| sign up and/or restrict access to your Medium articles
| even if you're not enrolled into its partner program.
|
| Is this incorrect?
| pbreit wrote:
| The uncertainty about whether my readers will get blocked from
| reading or not is a legit concern.
| cyber_kinetist wrote:
| Well, if your target audience is HN, then you really need to
| worry about this. But for the majority of the (non-technical)
| bloggers, this isn't the case.
| macspoofing wrote:
| Heh. How long until substack will fall out of favour with the
| tech and free speech crowd?
| [deleted]
| grishka wrote:
| You know your website is bad when people build a browser
| extension to make it usable for its original purpose.
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/make-medium-readab...
| zaik wrote:
| Load times of Medium posts on my Nexus 5X/Firefox Mobile were so
| bad, I stopped clicking on links to Medium eventually.
| cortesoft wrote:
| The author lists a bunch of alternatives, but none of them have
| monetization built in. How are those viable alternatives?
|
| This seems like it is totally missing the point about why people
| want to write on medium, which is to make money.
|
| This is the equivalent of telling people "why are you working at
| a job, why don't you work on hobby projects instead"
| Shraal wrote:
| > This is the equivalent of telling people "why are you working
| at a job, why don't you work on hobby projects instead"
|
| This is literally what people do sometimes. I released two
| decently successful freemium apps and get regularly one-liners
| in reviews and e-mails like this:
|
| - 3/5* Good app! Please make it free.
|
| - 1/5* Bad app! Feature XYZ costs money and I won't buy PRO
| [~4USD] just for it.
|
| - 1/5* Make it fully free and I will give you 5 stars!
|
| - Please send me your source code.
|
| HN posts and comments aren't that impudent but it's
| unfortunately often the same lack of perspective. You'll read
| here walls of text about how the web nowadays sucks because of
| ads and tracking without any consideration of the fact that
| publishers rely on this form of monetization. The most popular
| "solution" here is just blocking ads via pi-hole etc. and
| creates a good example for the tragedy of the commons[1]. It
| becomes an arms race between ad-blockers and ad-providers and
| makes everything even worse. This makes the appeal to stop
| using medium even more ironic. Medium is at least trying to
| create a sustainable online publishing platform that doesn't
| need classical online ads to survive.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
| scumcity wrote:
| twtr is also bad (requires an account just to read its amazingly
| intellectual social media content), but people still use it.
| Sigh. Let's blacklist this blogger guy for his perpetual crimes
| against civilization.
| throwdecro wrote:
| I chose random blog post on Medium and tried to copy a sentence
| out of it. It offers to let me "create an account to highlight a
| passage", or tweet it out via Twitter, but I can't just copy it
| and paste it into my notes elsewhere.
|
| Whose idea was it to assert this level of control over written
| material, especially user-generated material? It's a very
| unpleasant experience.
|
| EDIT: Dialing down my tone a bit here, I should have taken a
| minute between trying the frustrating thing and posting about it.
| [deleted]
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| It seems that you're using a user-hostile agent instead of a
| user agent.
| stalfosknight wrote:
| I solve that in Safari by enabling the Development menu and
| mapping Shift[?]J to Disable JavaScript.
|
| Works great for any website that tries to disable right
| clicking for whatever reason.
| quaintdev wrote:
| I understand general public can fall prey to fancy UI and easy
| blogging but I do not expect medium to be used by people from
| IT who know better.
|
| For example, recently both Dart and Flutter got version upgrade
| and they announced this via Medium. I mean you have largest
| Software company backing you. Why would you choose medium for
| your blog!?
| Ekaros wrote:
| Isn't software development currently just going and picking
| up what is the big popular name today. Be that platform,
| database, language or framework. Picking Medium fits
| perfectly to this mind-set. Move fast break things. Don't
| reinvent the wheel... Or do when it makes CV better even if
| you are writing same product again...
| imachine1980_ wrote:
| medium was a great platform, you can make you own subdomain
| and mange what you want, then the focus change from make a
| great blog experience from a modic price for non tech-savy
| to, try to become a premium buzzfed, the ui is the same but
| the home screen is full of crappy shit first post(The Real
| Way to Figure Out How Smart Someone Is it work every time),
| and you are force to premium or kick like happens to
| hackernoon and freecodecamp
| jayzalowitz wrote:
| One of the founders of Hackernoon here. They didn't kick so
| much as "you cant make any money here, and we are going to
| make it difficult for you to operate"
|
| Ev and co arent bad people. Im actually a fan, but i think
| he is shortsighted in his goals.
| abraham wrote:
| It's not like Google has it's own blogging platform...
| giantrobot wrote:
| Shhh, don't tell them! They'll kill it if they remember
| it's there.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > Whose idea was it to assert this level of control over
| written material, especially user-generated material? It's not
| just user-hostile, it's sadistic.
|
| It's optimized for public sharing of user generated content to
| social network platforms. Web 2.0 in a nutshell but optimized
| for outreach, not personal log.
| atoav wrote:
| Breaking a browsers default behaviour IMO needs a good
| justification. This isn't a good justification.
|
| If sharing would be really that important to your plattform,
| why not add it as an _option_ that doesn 't break expected
| behaviour?
| johnchristopher wrote:
| You are not the intended audience.
|
| I am not defending their model nor their implementation.
|
| > Breaking a browsers default behaviour IMO needs a good
| justification. This isn't a good justification.
|
| Good enough for them though. Their site, their choice.
| Also, it's not like there isn't many browser extensions to
| disable that behavior.
| a5aAqU wrote:
| > You are not the intended audience.
|
| A site full of programming articles (Medium) probably
| wants its articles to be read by programmers.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > A site full of programming articles (Medium) probably
| wants its articles to be read by programmers.
|
| I haven't found official data but programming is in the
| 25th position and software in dev in the 40th:
|
| Here are the top 43 most popular Medium tags in 2021
| Life (520,000 followers) Startup (487,000
| followers) Blockchain (473,000 followers)
| Poetry (455,000 followers) Life Lessons
| (452,000 followers) Politics (396,000
| followers) Health (374,000 followers)
| Love (350,000 followers) Travel (334,000
| followers) Technology (334,000 followers)
| Entrepreneurship (333,000 followers) Self
| Improvement (332,000 followers) Education
| (330,000 followers) Writing (324,000
| followers) Business (320,000 followers)
| Cryptocurrency (314,000 followers) Design
| (267,000 followers) Social Media (241,000
| followers) Music (228,000 followers)
| Relationships (214,000 followers) Social
| Media (214,000 followers) Sports (209,000
| followers) Mental Health (202,000 followers)
| Productivity (187,000 followers) Programming
| (186,000 followers) Food (167,000 followers)
| Leadership (166,000 followers) Javascript
| (160,000 followers) Art (152,000 followers)
| Fiction (143,000 followers) Humor (143,000
| followers) Artificial Intelligence (143,000
| followers) UX (138,000 followers)
| Culture (136,000 followers) Books (135,00
| followers) Photography (128,000 followers)
| Creativity (126,000 followers) Data Science
| (123,000 followers) Psychology (119,000
| followers) Software Development (117,000
| followers) Coronavirus (115,000 followers)
| Self (104,000 followers) Family (103,000
| followers)
|
| https://findingtom.com/most-popular-medium-tags/
|
| Other articles I found also show programming articles are
| in the bottom of the list.
| jayzalowitz wrote:
| Its almost like someone should have started a programming
| focused publication on Medium or something :P
| tomrod wrote:
| It's been this way since they launched, hasn't it?
|
| I tell you what would be really nice: a browser that lets me
| click & launch into reader mode directly.
|
| None of these shenanigans with Turing complete JS. Just give me
| text to read.
| julianlam wrote:
| Can you not do this with browsers? Turning off JS should get
| rid of most of the egregious stuff, and I think at least
| Firefox lets you strip out CSS and inject your own (or if
| not, then via plugin like Greasemonkey)...
| tomrod wrote:
| Maybe? The experience would be:
|
| - Normal model with JS on (modulo ad blocker/flash blocker)
|
| - Oh, hey, a site that plays shenanigans with text!
|
| - Rightclick, open in reader view
| btdmaster wrote:
| Perhaps imperfect, but how about [1]?
|
| [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/automatic-
| rea...
| gumby wrote:
| > I tell you what would be really nice: a browser that lets
| me click & launch into reader mode directly.
|
| Safari can be set to use reader mode by default (then you can
| tell it to ignore individual sites). I use it in this mode.
| tomrod wrote:
| Safari is stuck in the dark ages of Apple lockin, isn't it?
| gumby wrote:
| I'm not sure I would call it "lockin" but yes, it only
| runs on Apple devices.
|
| You asked if any browser does this, and I said that one
| did. Other browsers supported by your browsing history
| are unlikely to make this change.
| tomrod wrote:
| Totally fair take.
|
| Seems like it should be an easy plugin. I'll see if
| firefox has anything.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Safari is stuck in the dark ages of Apple lockin, isn
| 't it?_
|
| Why would Apple be obligated or even incentivised to make
| their browser for other operating systems?
| tomrod wrote:
| Same reason smart musicians embraced Napster. Led to more
| sales as the world shifted to streaming.
|
| In what world would they not want their browser to be
| used?
| gumby wrote:
| They used to support Safari for Windows but it was a lot
| of work. It was worth it so that developers using Windows
| had a change of testing for Safari as well. Once the
| iphone came out and Macs became popular development
| machines in their own right, the burden of supporting
| Safari on Windows stopped mattering.
|
| In Google's case the opposite applies: they don't have a
| development platform but need ubiquity because collecting
| user data is their reason for being. So they need to
| support a lot of platforms for the sake of their
| customers' (i.e. companies buying ads).
| skyfaller wrote:
| Everyone talks about how complicated browsers and the modern
| web are, and how impossible it is to make a new browser
| engine, even Microsoft gave up...
|
| What about a reader mode browser engine? Couldn't you make a
| great browser from scratch by limiting it to this use case?
| bool3max wrote:
| No need to dial your tone down, the absolute fucking baboons
| whose idea that level of restriction on a website was deserve
| every bit of hate and criticism they get.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Whose idea was it to assert this level of control over
| written material
|
| The real mistake was giving web developers the power to do this
| in the first place. It was meant to help usability by
| preventing selection of things that weren't meant to be
| selected.
|
| Of course the first thing people did instead was abuse it in
| order to protect "their content".
| marban wrote:
| Reader mode is your friend. (Not that I'm a supporter of this
| pattern)
| oxfordmale wrote:
| I use Firefox with Noscript browser next to my regular browser
| for any such websites with questionable practices.
| heywintermute wrote:
| It's even more frustrating when it some programming related
| blog and you can't copy and paste the code snippet
| a5aAqU wrote:
| Also, the code snippets often don't work when you paste them
| because of the "smart quotes".
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The worst part is this can be activated with CSS.
| have_faith wrote:
| There's a lot of genuine use cases for pointer-events:
| none, so it's a difficult issue to navigate.
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(page generated 2021-09-11 23:01 UTC)