11 ms·

It's funny, because some years ago when Medium blogs were starting to be posted left and right, people were praising the interface, and nobody listened to the f

It's funny, because some years ago when Medium blogs were starting to be posted left and right, people were praising the interface, and nobody listened to the few who objected. Now, we need all kinds of tricks, add-ons and blocks to just read five-minute posts during our commute. It's 2018, and there are a gazillion ways to get yourself in control of your stuff. The next free framework that comes, which promises a clean, non-distracting view, will also (most probably) eventually add advertisements, because, well, corporations need money. In my humble opinion, just write your Markdown files, and use one of the bajillion Static Sites Generators to create/host them, or fork a framework that already does this such as [1], copy-paste them in, and you're set. [1] https://github.com/barryclark/jekyll-now https://github.com/barryclark/jekyll-now

michaelmior 8y ago
Noone reads my blog anyway, but I also import my posts into Medium so people can read it there if they choose. Medium sets the canonical URL to the hosted version on my own site so SEO shouldn't take a hit.
sodosopa 8y ago
I use Jekyll and Forestry.io for my site but I’m also realistic and know that solution is a little too complicated for a lot of WordPress and Tumblr folks. The uptake in these tools are because of their simplicity, which honestly the design patterns haven’t changed in almost 20 years.
- RobGav 8y ago
  There is a great solution Publii - works like WordPress but generated static files. Great tool for beginners or developers. https://getpublii.com https://getpublii.com
  - aaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
    Come on man, 100% of your posts is shilling for Publii.
    - wild_preference 8y ago
      They really are. Does HN not do anything against accounts that so obviously advertise?
      - gus_massa 8y ago
        The mods can't see everything. It depends how evident it is and if the comments are relevant [1] and if the if the only purpose of the user is to make adds. My guess is that this user only makes a comment per month, so it's not so easy to remember. For an official reply, you can send an email to the mods hn@ycombinator.com and they can take a look at the history of comments of the user. [For example, this is an example of a comment that is not relevant at all https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16961492 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16961492 ] [1] It's fine to reply to the technical questions that appear about your page/app/product. It's not fine to add a link to your product in unconnected threads.
        type0 8y ago
        I agree. I'm okay with people promoting their stuff as long as it fits in the discussion and has proper disclosure that it's their project. But it's not very nice when almost every post is like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16961492 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16961492 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18032223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18032223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16400684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16400684
        sctb 8y ago
        Yes! All: please email us when you see stuff like this. We read emails.
        eropple 8y ago
        To amplify: they really do. I've got my beefs with HN moderation on occasion, but neither 'dang nor 'sctb have ever failed to respond to an email with a response, and a thoughtful one if it's a topic that needs one.
  - sctb 8y ago
    We've banned this account for spamming, but if you'd like to participate as intended you're welcome to email us at hn@ycombinator.com.
franciscop 8y ago
I am building my own Static Site Generator [1] similar to Jekyll for fun. It's so great to do this in 2018, compared to the first time I tried to manually build something similar around 2014. Now things are amazing, the npm libraries just seem to merge together nicely to build the whole thing. I just need RSS and a decent data parser for the blog entries list and it'll be all set. Not recommended for you to use it, just build one, it's fun! And easy, and you'll learn a lot. [1] https://github.com/franciscop/create-static-web https://github.com/franciscop/create-static-web
vanderZwan 8y ago
Depending on how simple you want it, you could just use MarkDeep, TexMe or MdMe plus something like NeoCities or a Github repo. You'd miss out on some benefits of a full generator, like automatically creating an archive page and RSS feeds and stuff like that, but you'd gain that 90's simplicity. [0] https://casual-effects.com/markdeep/ https://casual-effects.com/markdeep/ [1] https://github.com/susam/texme https://github.com/susam/texme [2] https://github.com/susam/mdme https://github.com/susam/mdme [3] https://neocities.org/ https://neocities.org/
- jedimastert 8y ago
  Man, I remember finding markdeep a while ago and I've been looking for it. Thanks for the link
- vanderZwan 8y ago
  Addendum: actually, github has an RSS feed for the releases page of a repo, so all you have to do is "release" each blog entry
wild_preference 8y ago
> people were praising the interface, and nobody listened to the few who objected. Or maybe objecting had the same effect it had back then as it does now: absolutely nothing. It's like me saying "the government is corrupt!" and, any time something happens or some time has passed, "shoulda listened! ;)" -- Seems a bit masturbatory at best.
village-idiot 8y ago
I've been using octopress for years. Too simple to consider changing it out for anything else.
coldtea 8y ago
>It's 2018, and there are a gazillion ways to get yourself in control of your stuff. But zero ways to get people to read it. I only read his post because it's on HN. And I read Medium stuff regularly on Medium. The chances of most people discovering some random blog? Not so much. Whereas Medium has concentrated eyeballs and knows their preferences to serve them stuff that's close to their tastes...
- ymolodtsov 8y ago
  That’s actually a great question — does Medium truly gives you that many readers that it makes sense to live in the closed ecosystem? I have its app installed and subscribed to a bunch of people but I still only go there via the links on the web and I feel like a lot of people do just like me.
  - djmashko2 8y ago
    As some anecdotal evidence, I get about half of my Medium views from people browsing the Medium app/feed. That's definitely been the number one reason I've stayed on the platform. Perhaps someone should develop a platform that creates the same discoverability, but while allowing people to retain control of the content?
    - munificent 8y ago
      Everything old is new again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring
  - 3pt14159 8y ago
    No. I started my own site around this time last year with a CSS / HTML template I modified and I did everything myself. I even wrote the static site compiler. This is really not hard. I have somewhere between seven and nine[0] articles out and my work has been translated into French, Portuguese (twice), Russian, and Uzbek. Medium isn't a source of traffic unless you're one of the very few writers they intentionally push. People share high quality work or new ideas, and audience engagement helps too, so link to your Twitter and share your email. [0] Since starting the site I've started writing for other publications and the audience flows back and forth between the sites, so it depends on what you think counts as an article.
tardismechanic 8y ago
Netlify maintains a handy list of the bajillion Static Site Generators: https://www.staticgen.com https://www.staticgen.com
geraldbauer 8y ago
FYI: Instead of the "old / out-dated" Jekyll Now setup by Barry Clark (before packaged themes arrived on GitHub Pages) - you can use the Minima theme (default) and get started in 60 seconds. See Hello, Minima! Theme - Get Started in 60 Seconds @ https://github.com/henrythemes/hello-minima-theme https://github.com/henrythemes/hello-minima-theme as a ready-to-fork (live) example. PS: For more ready-to-fork (open source) themes for GitHub pages, see the Dr Jekyll Themes directory / listing (200+ and counting) @ http://drjekyllthemes.github.io http://drjekyllthemes.github.io
astura 8y ago
> It's funny, because some years ago when Medium blogs were starting to be posted left and right, people were praising the interface, and nobody listened to the few who objected. Your memory is very, very different from mine. I remember Medium being heavily criticized by (sorry, lack of a better term) "tech nerds" for stuff like the article brings up when it first came out. People complained about it not working when Javascript was disabled and bloat for a text website, load times, etc., all sorts of stuff. People said they refused to visit Medium. In fact, it was so negative I'm a bit surprised it got as popular as it did with tech blogs. >Now, we need all kinds of tricks, add-ons and blocks to just read five-minute posts during our commute. Only "tech nerds" care about those sorts of things. Joe User reads Medium just fine without any tricks, add-ons and blocks.
tpaschalis 8y ago
Oh, and since everybody seems to post their personal blogs for critique, shameless plug in adding a link to my own, which I think gets the minimalism aesthetic sooomewhat right. It still needs some more slimming down, and small aesthetic changes would be welcome, but here it goes. [1] https://tpaschalis.github.io/ https://tpaschalis.github.io/
- akamaozu 8y ago
  Love your post about what good software is. Currently trawling your archive
  - tpaschalis 8y ago
    Thanks for the good words, stranger! I'm a terrible writer, but, there's only one way to get better! I really, really like your own blog, too :)
basch 8y ago
if you just need to publish something quick, and don't need the rest of the blogging features. https://telegra.ph/ https://telegra.ph/
amelius 8y ago
> It's funny, because some years ago when Medium blogs were starting to be posted left and right, people were praising the interface, and nobody listened to the few who objected. It's the same with OSX, often praised but at some point the UX got so bad that you'd have to install system updates through their music player iTunes.
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago
  I've been using macOS X since Snow Leopard, and at no point were software updates delivered through iTunes. In fact, I have the (probably bad) habit of running sudo rm -rf /Applications/iTunes.app on all my new machines (alongside a lot of other default apps).
RickS 8y ago
I am as sad as anyone that medium sold out an began to intentionally mistreat their users for "engagement" (read: money). But in their early days, their praise was well earned. I was a designer with a focus on typography at the time, and medium's defaults were an order of magnitude better than any other non-custom publishing platform at the time. Big, readable serifs, intentionally constrained column widths (and corresponding line length), and lots of attention to the details and best practices that ease the pain of reading things on the web. They're cluttered now, but they were intentionally uncluttered then, which isn't exactly typographic but is worth a lot in terms of cognitive burden. To the extent that this is table-stakes now, and no longer a differentiating factor, medium is mostly to blame IMO. They showed that doing web type the way typographers told you to got slam dunk results. Everyone copied their style and the web is vastly more readable for it. So while they lived long enough to become the villain, there's some gratefulness due to their former selves as well. ---- I personally do things the way you've described (markdown > jekyll > GH pages), but I think medium's value prop now is ease of distribution. You get bolted onto the homepage and other people's articles as part of a graph of other people's work, and writers find that valuable.
lazyjones 8y ago
> It's 2018, and there are a gazillion ways to get yourself in control of your stuff. It's 2018 and there's still no standardized format for a blog's complete content (text, images, comments/credentials for comment provider) that we could use to move quickly from one site/setup to another. It would be nice to just get all Tweets even into Hyde or whatever.
- zmix 8y ago
  Could be done with XML easily. But someone needs to do it ;-) and even more would need to accept it.
savanaly 8y ago
>Now, we need all kinds of tricks, add-ons and blocks to just read five-minute posts during our commute. Is this only a thing for phones? I never use my phone for web browsing, but I use my web browser. All I have on that is uBlock Origin and I have always found Medium pages completely clean and pleasant to look at with no clutter or ads.
sergiotapia 8y ago
Except I want to spend 0 seconds setting up some kind of blog system. I don't care about it whatsoever. So I use a hosted platform.
movedx 8y ago
I agree with the static hosting side of things. However that often requires more technical know-how such as the command-line, Git, and potentially other advanced topics. Instead I recommend people buy a domain, create a DigitalOcean account, have DigitalOcean manage it for them, and then create a single $10/month Droplet with their one-click deployment of Ghost. Now you have your markdown files and a self-hosted, beautiful blog. That being said I am a "power user", so I use Hugo and Netlify, but there are deeper requirements to make that work. I would love to see a one-click deployment of a Netlify based blog.

michaelmior 8y ago

Noone reads my blog anyway, but I also import my posts into Medium so people can read it there if they choose. Medium sets the canonical URL to the hosted version on my own site so SEO shouldn't take a hit.

sodosopa 8y ago

I use Jekyll and Forestry.io for my site but I’m also realistic and know that solution is a little too complicated for a lot of WordPress and Tumblr folks. The uptake in these tools are because of their simplicity, which honestly the design patterns haven’t changed in almost 20 years.

RobGav 8y ago
There is a great solution Publii - works like WordPress but generated static files. Great tool for beginners or developers. https://getpublii.com https://getpublii.com
- aaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
  Come on man, 100% of your posts is shilling for Publii.
  - wild_preference 8y ago
    They really are. Does HN not do anything against accounts that so obviously advertise?
    - gus_massa 8y ago
      The mods can't see everything. It depends how evident it is and if the comments are relevant [1] and if the if the only purpose of the user is to make adds. My guess is that this user only makes a comment per month, so it's not so easy to remember. For an official reply, you can send an email to the mods hn@ycombinator.com and they can take a look at the history of comments of the user. [For example, this is an example of a comment that is not relevant at all https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16961492 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16961492 ] [1] It's fine to reply to the technical questions that appear about your page/app/product. It's not fine to add a link to your product in unconnected threads.
      - type0 8y ago
        I agree. I'm okay with people promoting their stuff as long as it fits in the discussion and has proper disclosure that it's their project. But it's not very nice when almost every post is like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16961492 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16961492 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18032223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18032223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16400684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16400684
      - sctb 8y ago
        Yes! All: please email us when you see stuff like this. We read emails.
        eropple 8y ago
        To amplify: they really do. I've got my beefs with HN moderation on occasion, but neither 'dang nor 'sctb have ever failed to respond to an email with a response, and a thoughtful one if it's a topic that needs one.
- sctb 8y ago
  We've banned this account for spamming, but if you'd like to participate as intended you're welcome to email us at hn@ycombinator.com.

franciscop 8y ago

I am building my own Static Site Generator [1] similar to Jekyll for fun. It's so great to do this in 2018, compared to the first time I tried to manually build something similar around 2014. Now things are amazing, the npm libraries just seem to merge together nicely to build the whole thing. I just need RSS and a decent data parser for the blog entries list and it'll be all set. Not recommended for you to use it, just build one, it's fun! And easy, and you'll learn a lot. [1] https://github.com/franciscop/create-static-web https://github.com/franciscop/create-static-web

vanderZwan 8y ago

Depending on how simple you want it, you could just use MarkDeep, TexMe or MdMe plus something like NeoCities or a Github repo. You'd miss out on some benefits of a full generator, like automatically creating an archive page and RSS feeds and stuff like that, but you'd gain that 90's simplicity. [0] https://casual-effects.com/markdeep/ https://casual-effects.com/markdeep/ [1] https://github.com/susam/texme https://github.com/susam/texme [2] https://github.com/susam/mdme https://github.com/susam/mdme [3] https://neocities.org/ https://neocities.org/

jedimastert 8y ago
Man, I remember finding markdeep a while ago and I've been looking for it. Thanks for the link
vanderZwan 8y ago
Addendum: actually, github has an RSS feed for the releases page of a repo, so all you have to do is "release" each blog entry

wild_preference 8y ago

> people were praising the interface, and nobody listened to the few who objected. Or maybe objecting had the same effect it had back then as it does now: absolutely nothing. It's like me saying "the government is corrupt!" and, any time something happens or some time has passed, "shoulda listened! ;)" -- Seems a bit masturbatory at best.

village-idiot 8y ago

I've been using octopress for years. Too simple to consider changing it out for anything else.

coldtea 8y ago

>It's 2018, and there are a gazillion ways to get yourself in control of your stuff. But zero ways to get people to read it. I only read his post because it's on HN. And I read Medium stuff regularly on Medium. The chances of most people discovering some random blog? Not so much. Whereas Medium has concentrated eyeballs and knows their preferences to serve them stuff that's close to their tastes...

ymolodtsov 8y ago
That’s actually a great question — does Medium truly gives you that many readers that it makes sense to live in the closed ecosystem? I have its app installed and subscribed to a bunch of people but I still only go there via the links on the web and I feel like a lot of people do just like me.
- djmashko2 8y ago
  As some anecdotal evidence, I get about half of my Medium views from people browsing the Medium app/feed. That's definitely been the number one reason I've stayed on the platform. Perhaps someone should develop a platform that creates the same discoverability, but while allowing people to retain control of the content?
  - munificent 8y ago
    Everything old is new again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring
- 3pt14159 8y ago
  No. I started my own site around this time last year with a CSS / HTML template I modified and I did everything myself. I even wrote the static site compiler. This is really not hard. I have somewhere between seven and nine[0] articles out and my work has been translated into French, Portuguese (twice), Russian, and Uzbek. Medium isn't a source of traffic unless you're one of the very few writers they intentionally push. People share high quality work or new ideas, and audience engagement helps too, so link to your Twitter and share your email. [0] Since starting the site I've started writing for other publications and the audience flows back and forth between the sites, so it depends on what you think counts as an article.

tardismechanic 8y ago

Netlify maintains a handy list of the bajillion Static Site Generators: https://www.staticgen.com https://www.staticgen.com

geraldbauer 8y ago

FYI: Instead of the "old / out-dated" Jekyll Now setup by Barry Clark (before packaged themes arrived on GitHub Pages) - you can use the Minima theme (default) and get started in 60 seconds. See Hello, Minima! Theme - Get Started in 60 Seconds @ https://github.com/henrythemes/hello-minima-theme https://github.com/henrythemes/hello-minima-theme as a ready-to-fork (live) example. PS: For more ready-to-fork (open source) themes for GitHub pages, see the Dr Jekyll Themes directory / listing (200+ and counting) @ http://drjekyllthemes.github.io http://drjekyllthemes.github.io

astura 8y ago

> It's funny, because some years ago when Medium blogs were starting to be posted left and right, people were praising the interface, and nobody listened to the few who objected. Your memory is very, very different from mine. I remember Medium being heavily criticized by (sorry, lack of a better term) "tech nerds" for stuff like the article brings up when it first came out. People complained about it not working when Javascript was disabled and bloat for a text website, load times, etc., all sorts of stuff. People said they refused to visit Medium. In fact, it was so negative I'm a bit surprised it got as popular as it did with tech blogs. >Now, we need all kinds of tricks, add-ons and blocks to just read five-minute posts during our commute. Only "tech nerds" care about those sorts of things. Joe User reads Medium just fine without any tricks, add-ons and blocks.

tpaschalis 8y ago

Oh, and since everybody seems to post their personal blogs for critique, shameless plug in adding a link to my own, which I think gets the minimalism aesthetic sooomewhat right. It still needs some more slimming down, and small aesthetic changes would be welcome, but here it goes. [1] https://tpaschalis.github.io/ https://tpaschalis.github.io/

akamaozu 8y ago
Love your post about what good software is. Currently trawling your archive
- tpaschalis 8y ago
  Thanks for the good words, stranger! I'm a terrible writer, but, there's only one way to get better! I really, really like your own blog, too :)

basch 8y ago

if you just need to publish something quick, and don't need the rest of the blogging features. https://telegra.ph/ https://telegra.ph/

amelius 8y ago

> It's funny, because some years ago when Medium blogs were starting to be posted left and right, people were praising the interface, and nobody listened to the few who objected. It's the same with OSX, often praised but at some point the UX got so bad that you'd have to install system updates through their music player iTunes.

Wowfunhappy 8y ago
I've been using macOS X since Snow Leopard, and at no point were software updates delivered through iTunes. In fact, I have the (probably bad) habit of running sudo rm -rf /Applications/iTunes.app on all my new machines (alongside a lot of other default apps).

RickS 8y ago

I am as sad as anyone that medium sold out an began to intentionally mistreat their users for "engagement" (read: money). But in their early days, their praise was well earned. I was a designer with a focus on typography at the time, and medium's defaults were an order of magnitude better than any other non-custom publishing platform at the time. Big, readable serifs, intentionally constrained column widths (and corresponding line length), and lots of attention to the details and best practices that ease the pain of reading things on the web. They're cluttered now, but they were intentionally uncluttered then, which isn't exactly typographic but is worth a lot in terms of cognitive burden. To the extent that this is table-stakes now, and no longer a differentiating factor, medium is mostly to blame IMO. They showed that doing web type the way typographers told you to got slam dunk results. Everyone copied their style and the web is vastly more readable for it. So while they lived long enough to become the villain, there's some gratefulness due to their former selves as well. ---- I personally do things the way you've described (markdown > jekyll > GH pages), but I think medium's value prop now is ease of distribution. You get bolted onto the homepage and other people's articles as part of a graph of other people's work, and writers find that valuable.

lazyjones 8y ago

> It's 2018, and there are a gazillion ways to get yourself in control of your stuff. It's 2018 and there's still no standardized format for a blog's complete content (text, images, comments/credentials for comment provider) that we could use to move quickly from one site/setup to another. It would be nice to just get all Tweets even into Hyde or whatever.

zmix 8y ago
Could be done with XML easily. But someone needs to do it ;-) and even more would need to accept it.

savanaly 8y ago

>Now, we need all kinds of tricks, add-ons and blocks to just read five-minute posts during our commute. Is this only a thing for phones? I never use my phone for web browsing, but I use my web browser. All I have on that is uBlock Origin and I have always found Medium pages completely clean and pleasant to look at with no clutter or ads.

sergiotapia 8y ago

Except I want to spend 0 seconds setting up some kind of blog system. I don't care about it whatsoever. So I use a hosted platform.

movedx 8y ago

I agree with the static hosting side of things. However that often requires more technical know-how such as the command-line, Git, and potentially other advanced topics. Instead I recommend people buy a domain, create a DigitalOcean account, have DigitalOcean manage it for them, and then create a single $10/month Droplet with their one-click deployment of Ghost. Now you have your markdown files and a self-hosted, beautiful blog. That being said I am a "power user", so I use Hugo and Netlify, but there are deeper requirements to make that work. I would love to see a one-click deployment of a Netlify based blog.