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I've been yelling about this for years, but please start & own your own blog. Use webflow, ghost or whatever you like, but wordpress is good enough for most pe

I've been yelling about this for years, but please start & own your own blog. Use webflow, ghost or whatever you like, but wordpress is good enough for most people. HN audience can likely handle their own, but if ease-of-setup is an issue - I created StartABlog.com to help people do this (and we'll actually set up your site for you for free - https://startablog.com/start https://startablog.com/start). Own your platform. Own your content. Own your voice. Use everything else as distribution methods - not core dependencies.

badsectoracula 6y ago
Another easy solution, both for hosting and ownership, is using a static site generator/editor. I like desktop-based visual WYSIWYG tools so i use Publii[0] (example[1], though i really need to write something more :-P or at least move some older articles i had in now-defunct blogs that were hosted by others). I'm not a big fan of the program though (i dislike how it is based on Electron while not even taking advantage of it being based on Electron - e.g. no full WYSIWYG and not even an in-app site preview - and the UX has all the issues i dislike by modern apps like a design that pretends i'm using an oversized tablet) but it is the only one that does what i want without requiring me to enter cryptic codes (ok, markdown isn't so cryptic but i really prefer using WYSIWYG tools), having inline images/galleries and some (primitive) site management while generating static HTML (though a bit too heavy and i really dislike the themes... but again, not much of a choice and the tech used to make the themes look like a PITA so i avoid touching it for now). [0] https://getpublii.com/ https://getpublii.com/ [1] http://runtimeterror.com/devlog/ http://runtimeterror.com/devlog/
- boramalper 6y ago
  Publii looks great! Just out of curiosity, do you know any other WYSIWYG alternatives out there?
  - badsectoracula 6y ago
    No, other (desktop-based) stuff i know is WYSIWYG editors from the 90s. Well, there is BlueGriffon but last time i used that it felt very clunky. But if there was something else i'd probably try it too.
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- nicbou 6y ago
  Personally, I prefer a good ol' CMS. I manage my website by visiting a URL. I edit the content in a WYSIWYG editor, and it goes live when I press "Save". I don't need to install anything on my machine to write new content. With a properly set up cache, your website will be serving static files anyway.
  - badsectoracula 6y ago
    Well, this is claims to be a CMS too though it seems to be more mainly for blogs than something too generic. I guess you are supposed to make "posts" for individual pages and use the custom menus to make navigation. But personally i only wanted the blog feature so i never bothered setting up the menus or anything like that.
- ergest 6y ago
  I love Publii! Best combination of a WYSIWYG editor and static site gen. Beautiful themes and built in publishing for github pages, netlify, AWS S3, etc.
- edsimpson 6y ago
  +1 for Publii. I struggled to get non-technical users to use a static site generator like Hugo but the WYSIWYG tools of Publii made it very easy to move users over.
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kevingadd 6y ago
Agreed, but don't host your own wordpress unless you're planning to run a botnet. Everyone I know who's hosted their own wordpress in the past two decades has eventually regretted it.
- bad_user 6y ago
  I don't self-host Wordpress, my blog is a static site made with Jekyll and served by Nginx. A static site ages well. That said I self-host other services, like Matomo or FreshRSS (also PHP apps that need a database). The secret is in setting up auto-update policies. All the self-hosted services I host are in Docker and auto-updated [1] even if that means they can break. Have been doing this for some time and worked great thus far, but granted self-hosting stuff is a continued investment, you can't just leave that server there to bit rot. [1] https://github.com/containrrr/watchtower https://github.com/containrrr/watchtower
- SyneRyder 6y ago
  I upvoted this because it's also my experience. It's so frequent that I've stopped telling people when I discover their Wordpress is hacked, because half the time they don't care (!), and the rest of the time they beg me to help them fix it for free - instead of paying one of the many WordPress consultants who specialize in fixing hacked WordPress sites. The most common hack I've seen is one where the admin doesn't even know, because it redirects some visits to their site that have Google in the referrer. Because they rarely Google themselves while logged out of WordPress, they never know every page on their site is redirecting to MyCoolMalwareDroppr.
simula67 6y ago
How do you make sure you don't get hacked using Wordpress? I hosted my own blog for a short while and got hacked, so I moved back to Wordpress.com.
- nissehulth 6y ago
  Pretty much the usual. Make sure to keep it updated. Don't install crappy plugins. Use safe passwords.
- acidburnNSA 6y ago
  Strong passwords and regular updates. Ive had a WordPress blog for 15 years self hosted and havent to my knowledge been hacked yet.
  - simula67 6y ago
    I meant in a hands-off manner.
    - chillfox 6y ago
      You automate the updates. Also be very selective about installing plugins. If you are extra paranoid then you can put the login/admin/api behind a vpn.
      - steve_adams_86 6y ago
        Being selective about plugins is so important. When I first started working independently, I was blown away by how much work could be had just saving people from the misery of Wordpress plugins. Not glorious work, but wow, you could work until the sun is gone just churning out plugin updates for Wordpress site owners. Almost all of the problem plugins weren’t even that important to the site. Someone just added it at some point and left it, maybe for years. Then there you are running old code with known exploits. Of course you’re going to get hacked. Although I didn’t enjoy that work, I did love how excited and happy my clients were that their sites were fixed. You can’t measure the misery and anxiety some people feel when stuff goes wrong with their websites. Fixing that, with php and Wordpress no less, was a great feeling. All that is to say that I agree; only adopt plugins you really need with a reputation you’re comfortable with.
jiggawatts 6y ago
What's the best static site generator that meets the following requirements: a) Doesn't use node.js. b) Has built-in syntax highlighting for C#, SQL, PowerShell and Rust at a minimum. c) Is also good at "photo journals" or galleries. I played around with Hugo, but the themes were ugly and it was very weak at managing pictures associated with an entry instead of the entire site.
- pyr0hu 6y ago
  Check out Jigsaw, it's a PHP based static site generator
  - willvarfar 6y ago
    I have set non-technical people up using Markdown+pelican. I have no idea what made us use Pelican instead of something else, nor if those advantages still hold weight, but it’s been great.
    - frenchyatwork 6y ago
      For what it's worth, I prefer Pelican, largely because I can write a plugin if I need, without incurring significant brain damage. I've written code in PHP, Ruby, and JavaScript before, it's just not my first choice.
- dgellow 6y ago
  Not a static site generator (if that's what you mean), but I personally went with Grav: https://getgrav.org/ https://getgrav.org/. It's a small CMS written in modern PHP where the content is defined and managed via markdown files (so no need for a database). You have a bunch of themes and plugins directly installable through the admin interface and the documentation is good.
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- axegon_ 6y ago
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axegon_ 6y ago
I agree. Many years ago I was really happy with medium as a reader. And the feed algorithm was decent enough. By no means the perfect content but for the most part it pushed forward things I was interested in. However, the monetization model turned medium(originally a decent blogging platform) into tumblr and it was a race to the bottom from that point. Any website that asks you to register in order to read a blog post immediately goes on my blacklist. What is annoying though is that often people who self-host their blogs make the exact same mistake. More and more often I see something that will grab my attention and when I get to the bottom of a blog post, I find something along the lines of "The full guide is available in my free e-book, which you can download from here". And when you click "here", you are greeted with "Please enter your e-mail address". Sure, everyone has a spam-mail type of thing or mailinator or whatever but this is still a terrible thing to do.
- siscia 6y ago
  Writing good content take time and the content is valuable. I don't see it wrong to use it as marketing strategy.
  - dhimes 6y ago
    I agree there's nothing wrong with it. But does it work? Does Medium make money? It might be, despite the whining, they have it right in that they don't let an expectation of "this is free" ever develop. That strategy might be better than writing a long-ish blog entry as a teaser, where the reader thinks they are going to get their information for free, only to be told "Psyche! You've actually got to pay for it!"
- tomcam 6y ago
  > this is still a terrible thing to do. What’s the alternative, assuming the blogger doesn’t want to give everything away for free?
  - axegon_ 6y ago
    If the content is of any real value, I'd be more than happy to pay for it with money. 10 bucks? Sure, here you go. A much better option than getting emails such as "20 lessons I learned from my job interview" or whatever.
lowwave 6y ago
Thanks for the info. Just curious why you would mention webflow next to ghost? Webflow seems like a paid service, and as far as I can see on github it platform not open sourced. Ghost on the other hand is open source and can be self hosted.
jotto 6y ago
I made https://roast.io https://roast.io if you want a web host that auto-populates og:image with a screenshot
Funes- 6y ago
>own your own blog >Own your platform. Own your content. Own your voice. There's no way to fully own a place on the clearnet. At a minimum, you will have to rent a domain, and most people will rent the hosting as well. Moreover, authorities can seize or block both of those, while payment services can also "cancel" or "deplatform" you if you need them to pay for costs--so much for having a voice on the net. The only way to own content on the Internet is to publish it in a free, decentralized and anonymous manner--I'm thinking I2P sites, for instance, and even that is subject to attacks that could make it inaccessible. In any case, I wholewheartedly agree that Medium is not the home for anything worthwhile.
AJRF 6y ago
One thing you really miss when leaving Medium is the audience. It is easy for people search Medium for a topic they are interested in and find it within the first couple of articles. If you are trusting Google to be your entry point for traffic you have to play all kinds of gross games with your content for SEO purpose and if you are adding value to an already well explored topic there will be someone out there trouncing you in SEO. Medium was initially brilliant because it solved this by aggregating content in a slick website, with great search, and it still does a decent job of showing you new content based on your interests. I think this is a part of why its so frustrating. When I go on the home page I see a bunch of articles I would want to read, go to click them and get paywalled. But then the money men came. I'm not convinced there is anything out there like Medium in terms of ease-of-use, ability to get your content in front of others, good at surfacing new content you would want to read and also Medium pay content authors really really well.
- gwd 6y ago
  > and also Medium pay content authors really really well. This to me is the key thing, and what Medium's stated goal was: to re-think the way we pay for content. You may feel fine giving away your content for free, but it's perfectly reasonable for people to want to be paid for the value they create, and I like Medium's model way better than advertising.
- CM30 6y ago
  > One thing you really miss when leaving Medium is the audience. It is easy for people search Medium for a topic they are interested in and find it within the first couple of articles. Not sure I'd agree with this. I've tried looking for interesting articles on Medium recently, and it seems that once you want to go outside the 'make money online/internet nomad/political rants' genre, finding anything interesting becomes real difficult. It'a slso quite hard to find things from unknown/unpopular authors there too. Remember looking through a few Medium Digests and counting how popular each creator was, and found there was a huge bias towards people with large social media followings/existing fanbases in what was being promoted in those newsletters and on the Medium front page.
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rvz 6y ago
> Own your platform. Own your content. Own your voice. Use everything else as distribution methods - not core dependencies. Precisely this. I also have been yelling [0] about hosting your own GitLab, Gitea solution for individuals, companies and open-source organisations which frees you from the mercy of 'centralising everything' in GitHub which is nonsensical. Medium is essentially centralising and bringing blogs back into the dark ages with paywalls, de-platforming and Google Logins on someone else's blogging site. Own your code on your servers just like you own your website and blog. If the creator of Wireguard can do it, you can do it too. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23849565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23849565
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jedimastert 6y ago
My brother wanted to start writing about his recovery process[0] and asked me to help him make a blog. He said he wanted to learn a bunch of stuff so he could be self-sufficient enough to not have to ask me/"need my permission" to go from written post to publish. He had already bought a domain that came with some bottom-of-the-barrel free shared hosting service. I pointed him towards Wordpress, he set up the entire thing himself, and now has a sense of ownership he really appreciates. For me, Jekyll, Github Pages, and a couple lines of CSS were nothing[1], but there should be as little barrier to entry as possible if you have something to say [0]: https://andrewtag.com https://andrewtag.com (it's not self-promotion if it's someone else's blog) [1]: https://amtunlimited.gihub.io https://amtunlimited.gihub.io (this is definitely self-promotion, feel free to ignore)
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  The link to your blog gives an HTTPS error for me in Firefox.
  - jedimastert 6y ago
    That's embarrassing...I spelled it wrong https://amtunlimited.github.io https://amtunlimited.github.io
- ralls_ebfe 6y ago
  Both URLs fail for me due to SSL issues.
  - jedimastert 6y ago
    That's awkward... The top one just doesn't have it, the bottom is misspelled amtunlimited.github.io
jlokier 6y ago
Counterpoint (devil's advocate): When you get sick, poor or die, your own platform will almost certainly disappear, taking your content and ideas with it. If it's on Medium, your content is more likely to survive your demise.
- jvehent 6y ago
  that's why archive.org exists
  - jlokier 6y ago
    Good point! Only if your site gets picked up by archive.org though. (That's only going to happen with static sites, not those which require login or signup, etc.) Even then your ideas will still effectively disappear because search engines don't appear to crawl archive.org. (If they do it's incomplete - my own past content on archive.org does not get found by specific Google searches.) But perhaps search will change in future.
- chipotle_coyote 6y ago
  That assumes Medium survives your demise, which strikes me as a somewhat bold assumption to make.
  - jlokier 6y ago
    I suspect the content on Medium is now sufficiently valued that if Medium doesn't stay around, someone will make sure the content is copied and served somewhere else.
- da-x 6y ago
  Assuming that Github static pages infrastructure is maintained without breaking CNAMEs for the next half century, and assuming you pay for your domain 50 years in advance, maybe the static website can remain for that long?
InvisibleUp 6y ago
IMO, a really easy way to start would be with a GitHub pages repo[1] or a Neocities site[2]. You really shouldn't need anything more than basic HTML and CSS for most blogs. If you want tags or sidebars or RSS, you can use a static site generator like Jekyll[3], and it's still pretty simple. [1]: https://pages.github.com/ https://pages.github.com/ [2]: https://neocities.org/ https://neocities.org/ [3]: https://jekyllrb.com/ https://jekyllrb.com/
- sexy_seedbox 6y ago
  But Github has been going down or having major issues every month now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22802536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22802536 I would go with Netlify or Vercel with Gitlab.
AndrewStephens 6y ago
> Own your platform. Own your content. Own your voice. Use everything else as distribution methods - not core dependencies. 100% agree. I even went as far as to write my own static-site generator (not that impressive, everyone seems to have one these days), but even hosted blogs are better than using the Mediums of this world. There are trade-offs though. There is a little bit of on-going effort (and maybe expense) in keeping even an inactive blog going. Medium does take care of that side of things for you.
dmalvarado 6y ago
> I created StartABlog.com to help people do this (and we'll actually set up your site for you for free - https://startablog.com/start https://startablog.com/start). Brilliant idea. > Your password for Bluehost (double check that you spelled this right!) uhhhh
- ZeikJT 6y ago
  I guess Bluehost doesn't have any auth scheme so they had to use the age old workaround of just sharing passwords... not great at all. Also, you missed the fact that there's a typo on that line at the very end! > Your password for Bluehost (double check that you spelled this right!)e There's also the line above the password part: > Once you've purchased your hosting - forward the confirmation email you received to: team@startablog.com Which since I don't have I can't confirm if it has any sensitive information or not.
kmod 6y ago
I'll add my experience as a counterpoint -- I've been running my own wordpress blog for several years now, and the amount of effort involved has been surprisingly high. I've had to tune apache numerous times (seriously, who wants to tune apache in order to write a blog), I have to regularly defend it against malicious traffic, and I've had to manually fix the installation after a plugin installation prevented wordpress from starting. Plus since it's a one-off, I'm not convinced that I could bring it back if anything were to happen to the server it runs on. For a project blog I used hosted wordpress, and I found that to be a pretty good middle ground. Honestly I can't think of a case where running your own wordpress server is a good use of your time.
besieged 6y ago
So I have to use Bluehost in order to use your service?
jjjbokma 6y ago
I strongly agree. I have a (mostly) link blog [0] (for which I wrote the SSG [1]) and do link to Medium articles but am getting more and more tired by the nag-screen that shows up every 5 or so posts after having deleted the medium cookies (again). I guess there is an extension for that, but I am too lazy to install it :-) But a bigger question is for those who publish on Medium: how many people get scared away daily from your articles after hitting the sign up nag screen? [0] https://plurrrr.com/ https://plurrrr.com/ [1] https://github.com/john-bokma/tumblelog https://github.com/john-bokma/tumblelog (as of today available under MIT license)
LdSGSgvupDV 6y ago
For one being capable of using docker and traefik 2 (with letencrypt), [1]https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted#blogging-platforms https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted#blo...
NotSammyHagar 6y ago
It's kind of free but your service's landing page requires a domain name and hosting provider, so it's free setup but paid hosting is required (which appears to support multiple companies, not just yours to your credit).

badsectoracula 6y ago

Another easy solution, both for hosting and ownership, is using a static site generator/editor. I like desktop-based visual WYSIWYG tools so i use Publii[0] (example[1], though i really need to write something more :-P or at least move some older articles i had in now-defunct blogs that were hosted by others). I'm not a big fan of the program though (i dislike how it is based on Electron while not even taking advantage of it being based on Electron - e.g. no full WYSIWYG and not even an in-app site preview - and the UX has all the issues i dislike by modern apps like a design that pretends i'm using an oversized tablet) but it is the only one that does what i want without requiring me to enter cryptic codes (ok, markdown isn't so cryptic but i really prefer using WYSIWYG tools), having inline images/galleries and some (primitive) site management while generating static HTML (though a bit too heavy and i really dislike the themes... but again, not much of a choice and the tech used to make the themes look like a PITA so i avoid touching it for now). [0] https://getpublii.com/ https://getpublii.com/ [1] http://runtimeterror.com/devlog/ http://runtimeterror.com/devlog/

boramalper 6y ago
Publii looks great! Just out of curiosity, do you know any other WYSIWYG alternatives out there?
- badsectoracula 6y ago
  No, other (desktop-based) stuff i know is WYSIWYG editors from the 90s. Well, there is BlueGriffon but last time i used that it felt very clunky. But if there was something else i'd probably try it too.
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nicbou 6y ago
Personally, I prefer a good ol' CMS. I manage my website by visiting a URL. I edit the content in a WYSIWYG editor, and it goes live when I press "Save". I don't need to install anything on my machine to write new content. With a properly set up cache, your website will be serving static files anyway.
- badsectoracula 6y ago
  Well, this is claims to be a CMS too though it seems to be more mainly for blogs than something too generic. I guess you are supposed to make "posts" for individual pages and use the custom menus to make navigation. But personally i only wanted the blog feature so i never bothered setting up the menus or anything like that.
ergest 6y ago
I love Publii! Best combination of a WYSIWYG editor and static site gen. Beautiful themes and built in publishing for github pages, netlify, AWS S3, etc.
edsimpson 6y ago
+1 for Publii. I struggled to get non-technical users to use a static site generator like Hugo but the WYSIWYG tools of Publii made it very easy to move users over.
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kevingadd 6y ago

Agreed, but don't host your own wordpress unless you're planning to run a botnet. Everyone I know who's hosted their own wordpress in the past two decades has eventually regretted it.

bad_user 6y ago
I don't self-host Wordpress, my blog is a static site made with Jekyll and served by Nginx. A static site ages well. That said I self-host other services, like Matomo or FreshRSS (also PHP apps that need a database). The secret is in setting up auto-update policies. All the self-hosted services I host are in Docker and auto-updated [1] even if that means they can break. Have been doing this for some time and worked great thus far, but granted self-hosting stuff is a continued investment, you can't just leave that server there to bit rot. [1] https://github.com/containrrr/watchtower https://github.com/containrrr/watchtower
SyneRyder 6y ago
I upvoted this because it's also my experience. It's so frequent that I've stopped telling people when I discover their Wordpress is hacked, because half the time they don't care (!), and the rest of the time they beg me to help them fix it for free - instead of paying one of the many WordPress consultants who specialize in fixing hacked WordPress sites. The most common hack I've seen is one where the admin doesn't even know, because it redirects some visits to their site that have Google in the referrer. Because they rarely Google themselves while logged out of WordPress, they never know every page on their site is redirecting to MyCoolMalwareDroppr.

simula67 6y ago

How do you make sure you don't get hacked using Wordpress? I hosted my own blog for a short while and got hacked, so I moved back to Wordpress.com.

nissehulth 6y ago
Pretty much the usual. Make sure to keep it updated. Don't install crappy plugins. Use safe passwords.
acidburnNSA 6y ago
Strong passwords and regular updates. Ive had a WordPress blog for 15 years self hosted and havent to my knowledge been hacked yet.
- simula67 6y ago
  I meant in a hands-off manner.
  - chillfox 6y ago
    You automate the updates. Also be very selective about installing plugins. If you are extra paranoid then you can put the login/admin/api behind a vpn.
    - steve_adams_86 6y ago
      Being selective about plugins is so important. When I first started working independently, I was blown away by how much work could be had just saving people from the misery of Wordpress plugins. Not glorious work, but wow, you could work until the sun is gone just churning out plugin updates for Wordpress site owners. Almost all of the problem plugins weren’t even that important to the site. Someone just added it at some point and left it, maybe for years. Then there you are running old code with known exploits. Of course you’re going to get hacked. Although I didn’t enjoy that work, I did love how excited and happy my clients were that their sites were fixed. You can’t measure the misery and anxiety some people feel when stuff goes wrong with their websites. Fixing that, with php and Wordpress no less, was a great feeling. All that is to say that I agree; only adopt plugins you really need with a reputation you’re comfortable with.

jiggawatts 6y ago

What's the best static site generator that meets the following requirements: a) Doesn't use node.js. b) Has built-in syntax highlighting for C#, SQL, PowerShell and Rust at a minimum. c) Is also good at "photo journals" or galleries. I played around with Hugo, but the themes were ugly and it was very weak at managing pictures associated with an entry instead of the entire site.

pyr0hu 6y ago
Check out Jigsaw, it's a PHP based static site generator
- willvarfar 6y ago
  I have set non-technical people up using Markdown+pelican. I have no idea what made us use Pelican instead of something else, nor if those advantages still hold weight, but it’s been great.
  - frenchyatwork 6y ago
    For what it's worth, I prefer Pelican, largely because I can write a plugin if I need, without incurring significant brain damage. I've written code in PHP, Ruby, and JavaScript before, it's just not my first choice.
dgellow 6y ago
Not a static site generator (if that's what you mean), but I personally went with Grav: https://getgrav.org/ https://getgrav.org/. It's a small CMS written in modern PHP where the content is defined and managed via markdown files (so no need for a database). You have a bunch of themes and plugins directly installable through the admin interface and the documentation is good.
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axegon_ 6y ago

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axegon_ 6y ago

I agree. Many years ago I was really happy with medium as a reader. And the feed algorithm was decent enough. By no means the perfect content but for the most part it pushed forward things I was interested in. However, the monetization model turned medium(originally a decent blogging platform) into tumblr and it was a race to the bottom from that point. Any website that asks you to register in order to read a blog post immediately goes on my blacklist. What is annoying though is that often people who self-host their blogs make the exact same mistake. More and more often I see something that will grab my attention and when I get to the bottom of a blog post, I find something along the lines of "The full guide is available in my free e-book, which you can download from here". And when you click "here", you are greeted with "Please enter your e-mail address". Sure, everyone has a spam-mail type of thing or mailinator or whatever but this is still a terrible thing to do.

siscia 6y ago
Writing good content take time and the content is valuable. I don't see it wrong to use it as marketing strategy.
- dhimes 6y ago
  I agree there's nothing wrong with it. But does it work? Does Medium make money? It might be, despite the whining, they have it right in that they don't let an expectation of "this is free" ever develop. That strategy might be better than writing a long-ish blog entry as a teaser, where the reader thinks they are going to get their information for free, only to be told "Psyche! You've actually got to pay for it!"
tomcam 6y ago
> this is still a terrible thing to do. What’s the alternative, assuming the blogger doesn’t want to give everything away for free?
- axegon_ 6y ago
  If the content is of any real value, I'd be more than happy to pay for it with money. 10 bucks? Sure, here you go. A much better option than getting emails such as "20 lessons I learned from my job interview" or whatever.

lowwave 6y ago

Thanks for the info. Just curious why you would mention webflow next to ghost? Webflow seems like a paid service, and as far as I can see on github it platform not open sourced. Ghost on the other hand is open source and can be self hosted.

jotto 6y ago

I made https://roast.io https://roast.io if you want a web host that auto-populates og:image with a screenshot

Funes- 6y ago

>own your own blog >Own your platform. Own your content. Own your voice. There's no way to fully own a place on the clearnet. At a minimum, you will have to rent a domain, and most people will rent the hosting as well. Moreover, authorities can seize or block both of those, while payment services can also "cancel" or "deplatform" you if you need them to pay for costs--so much for having a voice on the net. The only way to own content on the Internet is to publish it in a free, decentralized and anonymous manner--I'm thinking I2P sites, for instance, and even that is subject to attacks that could make it inaccessible. In any case, I wholewheartedly agree that Medium is not the home for anything worthwhile.

AJRF 6y ago

One thing you really miss when leaving Medium is the audience. It is easy for people search Medium for a topic they are interested in and find it within the first couple of articles. If you are trusting Google to be your entry point for traffic you have to play all kinds of gross games with your content for SEO purpose and if you are adding value to an already well explored topic there will be someone out there trouncing you in SEO. Medium was initially brilliant because it solved this by aggregating content in a slick website, with great search, and it still does a decent job of showing you new content based on your interests. I think this is a part of why its so frustrating. When I go on the home page I see a bunch of articles I would want to read, go to click them and get paywalled. But then the money men came. I'm not convinced there is anything out there like Medium in terms of ease-of-use, ability to get your content in front of others, good at surfacing new content you would want to read and also Medium pay content authors really really well.

gwd 6y ago
> and also Medium pay content authors really really well. This to me is the key thing, and what Medium's stated goal was: to re-think the way we pay for content. You may feel fine giving away your content for free, but it's perfectly reasonable for people to want to be paid for the value they create, and I like Medium's model way better than advertising.
CM30 6y ago
> One thing you really miss when leaving Medium is the audience. It is easy for people search Medium for a topic they are interested in and find it within the first couple of articles. Not sure I'd agree with this. I've tried looking for interesting articles on Medium recently, and it seems that once you want to go outside the 'make money online/internet nomad/political rants' genre, finding anything interesting becomes real difficult. It'a slso quite hard to find things from unknown/unpopular authors there too. Remember looking through a few Medium Digests and counting how popular each creator was, and found there was a huge bias towards people with large social media followings/existing fanbases in what was being promoted in those newsletters and on the Medium front page.

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rvz 6y ago

> Own your platform. Own your content. Own your voice. Use everything else as distribution methods - not core dependencies. Precisely this. I also have been yelling [0] about hosting your own GitLab, Gitea solution for individuals, companies and open-source organisations which frees you from the mercy of 'centralising everything' in GitHub which is nonsensical. Medium is essentially centralising and bringing blogs back into the dark ages with paywalls, de-platforming and Google Logins on someone else's blogging site. Own your code on your servers just like you own your website and blog. If the creator of Wireguard can do it, you can do it too. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23849565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23849565

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jedimastert 6y ago

My brother wanted to start writing about his recovery process[0] and asked me to help him make a blog. He said he wanted to learn a bunch of stuff so he could be self-sufficient enough to not have to ask me/"need my permission" to go from written post to publish. He had already bought a domain that came with some bottom-of-the-barrel free shared hosting service. I pointed him towards Wordpress, he set up the entire thing himself, and now has a sense of ownership he really appreciates. For me, Jekyll, Github Pages, and a couple lines of CSS were nothing[1], but there should be as little barrier to entry as possible if you have something to say [0]: https://andrewtag.com https://andrewtag.com (it's not self-promotion if it's someone else's blog) [1]: https://amtunlimited.gihub.io https://amtunlimited.gihub.io (this is definitely self-promotion, feel free to ignore)

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
The link to your blog gives an HTTPS error for me in Firefox.
- jedimastert 6y ago
  That's embarrassing...I spelled it wrong https://amtunlimited.github.io https://amtunlimited.github.io
ralls_ebfe 6y ago
Both URLs fail for me due to SSL issues.
- jedimastert 6y ago
  That's awkward... The top one just doesn't have it, the bottom is misspelled amtunlimited.github.io

jlokier 6y ago

Counterpoint (devil's advocate): When you get sick, poor or die, your own platform will almost certainly disappear, taking your content and ideas with it. If it's on Medium, your content is more likely to survive your demise.

jvehent 6y ago
that's why archive.org exists
- jlokier 6y ago
  Good point! Only if your site gets picked up by archive.org though. (That's only going to happen with static sites, not those which require login or signup, etc.) Even then your ideas will still effectively disappear because search engines don't appear to crawl archive.org. (If they do it's incomplete - my own past content on archive.org does not get found by specific Google searches.) But perhaps search will change in future.
chipotle_coyote 6y ago
That assumes Medium survives your demise, which strikes me as a somewhat bold assumption to make.
- jlokier 6y ago
  I suspect the content on Medium is now sufficiently valued that if Medium doesn't stay around, someone will make sure the content is copied and served somewhere else.
da-x 6y ago
Assuming that Github static pages infrastructure is maintained without breaking CNAMEs for the next half century, and assuming you pay for your domain 50 years in advance, maybe the static website can remain for that long?

InvisibleUp 6y ago

IMO, a really easy way to start would be with a GitHub pages repo[1] or a Neocities site[2]. You really shouldn't need anything more than basic HTML and CSS for most blogs. If you want tags or sidebars or RSS, you can use a static site generator like Jekyll[3], and it's still pretty simple. [1]: https://pages.github.com/ https://pages.github.com/ [2]: https://neocities.org/ https://neocities.org/ [3]: https://jekyllrb.com/ https://jekyllrb.com/

sexy_seedbox 6y ago
But Github has been going down or having major issues every month now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22802536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22802536 I would go with Netlify or Vercel with Gitlab.

AndrewStephens 6y ago

> Own your platform. Own your content. Own your voice. Use everything else as distribution methods - not core dependencies. 100% agree. I even went as far as to write my own static-site generator (not that impressive, everyone seems to have one these days), but even hosted blogs are better than using the Mediums of this world. There are trade-offs though. There is a little bit of on-going effort (and maybe expense) in keeping even an inactive blog going. Medium does take care of that side of things for you.

dmalvarado 6y ago

> I created StartABlog.com to help people do this (and we'll actually set up your site for you for free - https://startablog.com/start https://startablog.com/start). Brilliant idea. > Your password for Bluehost (double check that you spelled this right!) uhhhh

ZeikJT 6y ago
I guess Bluehost doesn't have any auth scheme so they had to use the age old workaround of just sharing passwords... not great at all. Also, you missed the fact that there's a typo on that line at the very end! > Your password for Bluehost (double check that you spelled this right!)e There's also the line above the password part: > Once you've purchased your hosting - forward the confirmation email you received to: team@startablog.com Which since I don't have I can't confirm if it has any sensitive information or not.

kmod 6y ago

I'll add my experience as a counterpoint -- I've been running my own wordpress blog for several years now, and the amount of effort involved has been surprisingly high. I've had to tune apache numerous times (seriously, who wants to tune apache in order to write a blog), I have to regularly defend it against malicious traffic, and I've had to manually fix the installation after a plugin installation prevented wordpress from starting. Plus since it's a one-off, I'm not convinced that I could bring it back if anything were to happen to the server it runs on. For a project blog I used hosted wordpress, and I found that to be a pretty good middle ground. Honestly I can't think of a case where running your own wordpress server is a good use of your time.

besieged 6y ago

So I have to use Bluehost in order to use your service?

jjjbokma 6y ago

I strongly agree. I have a (mostly) link blog [0] (for which I wrote the SSG [1]) and do link to Medium articles but am getting more and more tired by the nag-screen that shows up every 5 or so posts after having deleted the medium cookies (again). I guess there is an extension for that, but I am too lazy to install it :-) But a bigger question is for those who publish on Medium: how many people get scared away daily from your articles after hitting the sign up nag screen? [0] https://plurrrr.com/ https://plurrrr.com/ [1] https://github.com/john-bokma/tumblelog https://github.com/john-bokma/tumblelog (as of today available under MIT license)

LdSGSgvupDV 6y ago

For one being capable of using docker and traefik 2 (with letencrypt), [1]https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted#blogging-platforms https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted#blo...

NotSammyHagar 6y ago

It's kind of free but your service's landing page requires a domain name and hosting provider, so it's free setup but paid hosting is required (which appears to support multiple companies, not just yours to your credit).