5 ms·

Just roll your own blog already. If there's one thing these services reinforce over and over again - it's that they'll change their terms over time. Own your s

Just roll your own blog already. If there's one thing these services reinforce over and over again - it's that they'll change their terms over time. Own your site. Own your data. Put it all on your own terms. If you need help setting one up (unlikely for this crowd), you can have one made for you for free here. https://StartABlog.com/free-blog https://StartABlog.com/free-blog

whsheet 7y ago
I disagree. Use your time to setup something smarter than a blog. A turn-key ready static site generator still takes 10x the time to set up than just using a random blog site. Also, you waste time fiddling with CSS adjusting crappy themes. Only upside would be post editing in vim. But again, do something smarter, too many new shiny toys wait for you: Tensorflow, Haskell, Rust, ESP32... extend the list yourself.
- greggman2 7y ago
  Agree. Switching from wordpress to a static site generator has made it much harder to post for me. Sure I can use vim (or my editor of choice) but on wordpress I could post from any browser on any machine, even a phone or tablet, including images with sites that have a front end. I'm not going back but I'd post more if I had a front end like I had on wordpress. Note: IMO as a middle solution just using github is not enough. Yes I can create a new file from the interface but no preview, clunky image uploading, clucky image embedding, and other issues.
  - thanatropism 7y ago
    Bonus: wordpress.com has some (limited, but nonzero) "discoverability". Blogs can be "followed" so you can have an idea of which are the 15-50 people who look at your stuff week in, week out.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
new_here 7y ago
Agree that everyone should have their own site but we just want to create another corner on the web where you can read and write interesting, well presented content and find jobs etc. You're also welcome to cross-post to Able to help build an audience to your blog too. One thing we don't want to do is bait and switch users like other venture funded companies have done recently. We just want to build a good community and charge businesses to advertise jobs to good people. I understand your skepticism though, hopefully over time we can prove that not everyone has to play that game. You can read more about our intentions and business model here: https://able.bio/about https://able.bio/about
- rubbingalcohol 7y ago
  I would encourage you to release this under a free software license like GPL. People are increasingly skeptical of "platforms" and proprietary licensing.
  - sedachv 7y ago
    The Affero GPL is especially suitable for hosted computing and services: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html
  - Rainymood 7y ago
    >People are increasingly skeptical of "platforms" and proprietary licensing. And with people you mean ... ? The general public (i.e. "people") don't really care much about their privacy.
zschuessler 7y ago
This is great advice for those who don't want discoverability. However, for everyone else, Medium going to the dark side was a huge pain because there was no alternative. They had a monopoly on the "write articles and get discovered" market. Maybe some here don't care about discoverability, but most writers do. To Able: thank you so much for trying to fill this void. I would recommend that you not focus solely on developer content and hit the casual crowd. We already have options for the tech savvy that work well, and none for casuals. Medium was the only good option for that. Features like the table of contents are nice for technical content, but an eyesore for casual content.
- whsheet 7y ago
  > hit the casual crowd Forget the casual crowd. First reason: It’s always good to start with one demography and fulfilling their requirements. Second and TBH, the casual crowd sucks steel when creating short-form blog content. Go to the Linkedin blogs, all non-tech Medium blogs, TED talks, Facebook: 99% is useless, already seen, self-help-type advice covered with click-baity titles. Every Reddit post has more substance and authenticity than the mentioned above. Edit: To the pro downvoters, instead of downvoting just reply and link to one eg. single useful non-tech Linkedin blog.
  - close04 7y ago
    > all non-tech Medium blogs > link to one eg. single useful non-tech Linkedin blog I agree with the first part of your comment. Narrowing the focus to a specific demo makes it far easier to provide exactly what your target audience needs, thus a higher quality product/service. But I have doubts about the second part. You're classifying everything in 2 categories, "tech" and "non-tech" (I assume non-IT here) so this particular thing or absolutely everything else all in one bag. How qualified are you to judge the dozens of non-tech fields out there, say psychology, economics, marine biology, or agriculture? Is this a bit of (reverse?) Gell-Mann amnesia effect where you can accurately judge a tech blog on LinkedIn as being good but when it comes to something outside of your field of expertise you assume low quality?
    - 7y ago
strenholme 7y ago
There are a lot of blog hosting platforms. The most popular is Wordpress (which, yes, needs a database back end), whose source code can be downloaded at https://wordpress.org/download/source/ https://wordpress.org/download/source/ One way to create a static site is with GatsbyJS: https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby Or Jekyll: https://github.com/jekyll/jekyll https://github.com/jekyll/jekyll
vfc1 7y ago
This is so true, Medium started paywalling free content a couple of months ago. This means people leading on your blog, wanting to read your content and being prevented to do so unless they pay Medium.
sdan 7y ago
Use Ghost. It's self-hosted and gives all the functionality you need for beginners and advanced users alike. Running it on https://sdan.xyz/blog https://sdan.xyz/blog and it's fantastic. I get RSS/subscriptions (https://sdan.xyz/subscribe)/podcasts/a https://sdan.xyz/subscribe)/podcasts/a whole plethora of integrations super easily. And since it's self hosted, you don't need to worry about it ever going down (unlike if Able.bio ever does). Also, Lighthouse gives Ghost blogs top scores as well :).
- gnicholas 7y ago
  I was super impressed by how fast your blog loaded, but then I got caught in some sort of loop on this page [1], which won’t load. 1: https://blog.suryad.com/datascience/ https://blog.suryad.com/datascience/
  - sdan 7y ago
    My bad! Made this post a while back and I used 10+ repl.it embedded editors. Although it does seem to load eventually, I should update it to use some better editor that loads faster!
  - sdan 7y ago
    Also appreciate your comments on how fast it can load! I've been vehemently working on load times across all my websites for over a year now. Working on a blog post on how I could reduce load times and make it portable, scalable, and reliable (the server itself). Thanks for the feedback!
- alireza94 7y ago
  You can even make your deployment easier by using a static site generator like Hugo.
  - sdan 7y ago
    Ghost also supports creating static sites, although I haven't gone that route. Hugo is a valid option though!
bachmeier 7y ago
For the less-technical crowd, you can put markdown files in a Gitlab repo. You don't even have to know how to use Git. You can create and edit files without leaving the website.
- indigodaddy 7y ago
  This is the Gitlab Web Editor or whatever it's called right?
fiatjaf 7y ago
That startablog.com thing is terrible does bad and very expensive recommendations, recommend expensive services, and then asks you to pay themselves to build a blog for you that will rely on all these services with no guarantee for a large price. If that's what starting a blog looks like I think I'll start recommending people to Medium or Able now.
notus 7y ago
I think part of the point of platforms like medium is that you don't have to pay for the costs in case your blog gets hugged a lot.

whsheet 7y ago

I disagree. Use your time to setup something smarter than a blog. A turn-key ready static site generator still takes 10x the time to set up than just using a random blog site. Also, you waste time fiddling with CSS adjusting crappy themes. Only upside would be post editing in vim. But again, do something smarter, too many new shiny toys wait for you: Tensorflow, Haskell, Rust, ESP32... extend the list yourself.

greggman2 7y ago
Agree. Switching from wordpress to a static site generator has made it much harder to post for me. Sure I can use vim (or my editor of choice) but on wordpress I could post from any browser on any machine, even a phone or tablet, including images with sites that have a front end. I'm not going back but I'd post more if I had a front end like I had on wordpress. Note: IMO as a middle solution just using github is not enough. Yes I can create a new file from the interface but no preview, clunky image uploading, clucky image embedding, and other issues.
- thanatropism 7y ago
  Bonus: wordpress.com has some (limited, but nonzero) "discoverability". Blogs can be "followed" so you can have an idea of which are the 15-50 people who look at your stuff week in, week out.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

new_here 7y ago

Agree that everyone should have their own site but we just want to create another corner on the web where you can read and write interesting, well presented content and find jobs etc. You're also welcome to cross-post to Able to help build an audience to your blog too. One thing we don't want to do is bait and switch users like other venture funded companies have done recently. We just want to build a good community and charge businesses to advertise jobs to good people. I understand your skepticism though, hopefully over time we can prove that not everyone has to play that game. You can read more about our intentions and business model here: https://able.bio/about https://able.bio/about

rubbingalcohol 7y ago
I would encourage you to release this under a free software license like GPL. People are increasingly skeptical of "platforms" and proprietary licensing.
- sedachv 7y ago
  The Affero GPL is especially suitable for hosted computing and services: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html
- Rainymood 7y ago
  >People are increasingly skeptical of "platforms" and proprietary licensing. And with people you mean ... ? The general public (i.e. "people") don't really care much about their privacy.

zschuessler 7y ago

This is great advice for those who don't want discoverability. However, for everyone else, Medium going to the dark side was a huge pain because there was no alternative. They had a monopoly on the "write articles and get discovered" market. Maybe some here don't care about discoverability, but most writers do. To Able: thank you so much for trying to fill this void. I would recommend that you not focus solely on developer content and hit the casual crowd. We already have options for the tech savvy that work well, and none for casuals. Medium was the only good option for that. Features like the table of contents are nice for technical content, but an eyesore for casual content.

whsheet 7y ago
> hit the casual crowd Forget the casual crowd. First reason: It’s always good to start with one demography and fulfilling their requirements. Second and TBH, the casual crowd sucks steel when creating short-form blog content. Go to the Linkedin blogs, all non-tech Medium blogs, TED talks, Facebook: 99% is useless, already seen, self-help-type advice covered with click-baity titles. Every Reddit post has more substance and authenticity than the mentioned above. Edit: To the pro downvoters, instead of downvoting just reply and link to one eg. single useful non-tech Linkedin blog.
- close04 7y ago
  > all non-tech Medium blogs > link to one eg. single useful non-tech Linkedin blog I agree with the first part of your comment. Narrowing the focus to a specific demo makes it far easier to provide exactly what your target audience needs, thus a higher quality product/service. But I have doubts about the second part. You're classifying everything in 2 categories, "tech" and "non-tech" (I assume non-IT here) so this particular thing or absolutely everything else all in one bag. How qualified are you to judge the dozens of non-tech fields out there, say psychology, economics, marine biology, or agriculture? Is this a bit of (reverse?) Gell-Mann amnesia effect where you can accurately judge a tech blog on LinkedIn as being good but when it comes to something outside of your field of expertise you assume low quality?
  - 7y ago

strenholme 7y ago

There are a lot of blog hosting platforms. The most popular is Wordpress (which, yes, needs a database back end), whose source code can be downloaded at https://wordpress.org/download/source/ https://wordpress.org/download/source/ One way to create a static site is with GatsbyJS: https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby Or Jekyll: https://github.com/jekyll/jekyll https://github.com/jekyll/jekyll

vfc1 7y ago

This is so true, Medium started paywalling free content a couple of months ago. This means people leading on your blog, wanting to read your content and being prevented to do so unless they pay Medium.

sdan 7y ago

Use Ghost. It's self-hosted and gives all the functionality you need for beginners and advanced users alike. Running it on https://sdan.xyz/blog https://sdan.xyz/blog and it's fantastic. I get RSS/subscriptions (https://sdan.xyz/subscribe)/podcasts/a https://sdan.xyz/subscribe)/podcasts/a whole plethora of integrations super easily. And since it's self hosted, you don't need to worry about it ever going down (unlike if Able.bio ever does). Also, Lighthouse gives Ghost blogs top scores as well :).

gnicholas 7y ago
I was super impressed by how fast your blog loaded, but then I got caught in some sort of loop on this page [1], which won’t load. 1: https://blog.suryad.com/datascience/ https://blog.suryad.com/datascience/
- sdan 7y ago
  My bad! Made this post a while back and I used 10+ repl.it embedded editors. Although it does seem to load eventually, I should update it to use some better editor that loads faster!
- sdan 7y ago
  Also appreciate your comments on how fast it can load! I've been vehemently working on load times across all my websites for over a year now. Working on a blog post on how I could reduce load times and make it portable, scalable, and reliable (the server itself). Thanks for the feedback!
alireza94 7y ago
You can even make your deployment easier by using a static site generator like Hugo.
- sdan 7y ago
  Ghost also supports creating static sites, although I haven't gone that route. Hugo is a valid option though!

bachmeier 7y ago

For the less-technical crowd, you can put markdown files in a Gitlab repo. You don't even have to know how to use Git. You can create and edit files without leaving the website.

indigodaddy 7y ago
This is the Gitlab Web Editor or whatever it's called right?

fiatjaf 7y ago

That startablog.com thing is terrible does bad and very expensive recommendations, recommend expensive services, and then asks you to pay themselves to build a blog for you that will rely on all these services with no guarantee for a large price. If that's what starting a blog looks like I think I'll start recommending people to Medium or Able now.

notus 7y ago

I think part of the point of platforms like medium is that you don't have to pay for the costs in case your blog gets hugged a lot.