3 ms·

It's even worse since Medium's transition to a paid content (paid by the industry, not by the reader) platform. I wonder why not more people just use a static

by cryptos 10y ago

It's even worse since Medium's transition to a paid content (paid by the industry, not by the reader) platform. I wonder why not more people just use a static site generator like Hugo and host their blog themselves.

mkohlmyr 10y ago
1. Most people don't want to generate a static site. 2. Most people don't want to host a static site. 3. Most people don't know how to do either. 4. Most people do want others to read what they write. 5. More people will visit your curator / aggregator of choice than your website. That being said it would be kind of neat if they took on more of a wordpress strategy: 1. The blogging engine gets open sourced and is made self-hostable (in addition to hosted option) 2. They host an opt-in disqus-like widget for comments / likes. 3. The medium website did recommendation and curation for all blogs that use the widget. 4. They ran an opt-in ad-network for hosted and self-hosted alike.
- type0 10y ago
  Hugo is great though, easy to use, its not more difficult than other software to use. Users are just afraid of command line tools. I don't think wordpress strategy would work for medium. The best they can do is to improve their algoritms so that people can get good suggestions on the things of their interest. Sort of like subject circles, marketing ppl get to see their shit, engineers get to see their and other nerds can have their own cirlejerk.
dexterdog 10y ago
Probably because more people haven't heard of it and Hugo doesn't spend nearly as much on brand awareness as Medium does.
buckhx 10y ago
I wanted to write a technical article and medium seemed like a good place to publish it. The analytics were simple and didn't require additional set up and I was hoping to reach a different audience from publishing on medium. Overall I was satisfied, but might switch to a static site generator like you said for a couple reasons. The code style is clunky and doesn't highlight syntax and I believe HN penalizes medium articles in its algorithms. A couple other people have submitted my article and I've watched the posts climb in (~10) votes and almost make it to the front page and then magically disappear. I've tried resubmitted a number of times to no avail. From what I've read it's because medium articles are devalued here. I put a lot of work into that article and while it did get a decent amount of views (~15k) and was on High Scalability, I am pretty discouraged that I couldn't share it with the HN community.

by cryptos 10y ago

mkohlmyr 10y ago

1. Most people don't want to generate a static site. 2. Most people don't want to host a static site. 3. Most people don't know how to do either. 4. Most people do want others to read what they write. 5. More people will visit your curator / aggregator of choice than your website. That being said it would be kind of neat if they took on more of a wordpress strategy: 1. The blogging engine gets open sourced and is made self-hostable (in addition to hosted option) 2. They host an opt-in disqus-like widget for comments / likes. 3. The medium website did recommendation and curation for all blogs that use the widget. 4. They ran an opt-in ad-network for hosted and self-hosted alike.

type0 10y ago
Hugo is great though, easy to use, its not more difficult than other software to use. Users are just afraid of command line tools. I don't think wordpress strategy would work for medium. The best they can do is to improve their algoritms so that people can get good suggestions on the things of their interest. Sort of like subject circles, marketing ppl get to see their shit, engineers get to see their and other nerds can have their own cirlejerk.

dexterdog 10y ago

Probably because more people haven't heard of it and Hugo doesn't spend nearly as much on brand awareness as Medium does.

buckhx 10y ago

I wanted to write a technical article and medium seemed like a good place to publish it. The analytics were simple and didn't require additional set up and I was hoping to reach a different audience from publishing on medium. Overall I was satisfied, but might switch to a static site generator like you said for a couple reasons. The code style is clunky and doesn't highlight syntax and I believe HN penalizes medium articles in its algorithms. A couple other people have submitted my article and I've watched the posts climb in (~10) votes and almost make it to the front page and then magically disappear. I've tried resubmitted a number of times to no avail. From what I've read it's because medium articles are devalued here. I put a lot of work into that article and while it did get a decent amount of views (~15k) and was on High Scalability, I am pretty discouraged that I couldn't share it with the HN community.