6 ms·

Kind advice to everyone willing to share their write ups: avoid Medium. I can’t read the article because of the signup wall. It is cheap and easy to set up a b

by nrvn 5y ago

Kind advice to everyone willing to share their write ups: avoid Medium. I can’t read the article because of the signup wall. It is cheap and easy to set up a blog on your own custom domain.

bambax 5y ago
> It is cheap and easy to set up a blog on your own custom domain True. But you can defeat all of Medium's annoying features by just disabling JavaScript.
- BossingAround 5y ago
  While true, I'd say a lot of people just won't even bother. I've seen people refuse to download whole books because they needed to put in email. "You can create a 10-minute email" you say. True, and a lot of people do while also a lot of people simply don't want the book that much.
  - zeta0134 5y ago
    I've found more instances of sites blocking the temporary email services (typically forums) than I have situations where it worked as a bypass :/
  - ajdude 5y ago
    I’m kind of like that but in the other direction. I disable JavaScript on everything by default, and if I run into a website or a blog that won’t work without JavaScript, most of the time I just give up and leave the site instead of enabling JavaScript for that specific domain.
    - C-x_C-f 5y ago
      This. I've also noticed that websites that don't run without JS are either interactive apps (for which it is understandable) or sites that want to load JS from so many places that I simply can't be bothered figuring out which ones to whitelist.
      - ajdude 5y ago
        Some websites like Quora would go so far as to just lock me completely out with a blank page that simply says "Please enable Javascript and refresh the page to continue" I have trouble believing that they absolutely /need/ JavaScript to load answers to random questions on what seems like a relatively static page.
- jay3ss 5y ago
  That didn't work for me. Going to incognito mode worked, but it's very annoying to have to do these workarounds, even if they are minor
runawaybottle 5y ago
I think it’s a choice to monetize your writings. Medium doesn’t force you to put your stuff behind a paywall. We need to stop blaming Medium and realize the authors wanted to monetize.
- zerop 5y ago
  One can not associate it to author always. see below https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24314481 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24314481 I see some of the famous company’s tech blogs on medium have posts behind paywall. Do you think they would put it behind paywall to make money from blog post.. For example - https://netflixtechblog.com/empowering-the-visual-effects-community-with-the-netfx-platform-35fdf604909c https://netflixtechblog.com/empowering-the-visual-effects-co...
- runevault 5y ago
  I could be wrong but even if you choose not to join the system I think it might still count against views. But you can dig into the story settings and get a referrer link that does not eat page views.
ivanche 5y ago
In situations like these, Bypass Paywalls extension for Firefox comes really handy! Especially in combination with uMatrix and uBlock Origin.
- antman 5y ago
  For Android Firefox has disabled almost all addons so the same solution is Kiwi browser that can load chrome addons (got the solution here on HN)
- CharlesW 5y ago
  > Bypass Paywalls extension for Firefox There's a few of these. Can anyone confirm that https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bypass-paywalls-firefox/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bypass-paywal... is the "real" one and is safe?
  - ivanche 5y ago
    Yes, that's the one.
tomaskafka 5y ago
> It is cheap and easy to set up a blog on your own custom domain. And no one needs Dropbox, because everyone can easily set up some rsync and ftp server
Sindaru 5y ago
You can read it in incognito mode
lwhi 5y ago
Fair enough, but this doesn't have much to do with the article. I don't understand why it's the top comment.
- just_one_time_ 5y ago
  Because the article is worthless but written by a woman so no one feels they can say anything negative about it.

by nrvn 5y ago

Kind advice to everyone willing to share their write ups: avoid Medium. I can’t read the article because of the signup wall. It is cheap and easy to set up a blog on your own custom domain.

bambax 5y ago

> It is cheap and easy to set up a blog on your own custom domain True. But you can defeat all of Medium's annoying features by just disabling JavaScript.

BossingAround 5y ago
While true, I'd say a lot of people just won't even bother. I've seen people refuse to download whole books because they needed to put in email. "You can create a 10-minute email" you say. True, and a lot of people do while also a lot of people simply don't want the book that much.
- zeta0134 5y ago
  I've found more instances of sites blocking the temporary email services (typically forums) than I have situations where it worked as a bypass :/
- ajdude 5y ago
  I’m kind of like that but in the other direction. I disable JavaScript on everything by default, and if I run into a website or a blog that won’t work without JavaScript, most of the time I just give up and leave the site instead of enabling JavaScript for that specific domain.
  - C-x_C-f 5y ago
    This. I've also noticed that websites that don't run without JS are either interactive apps (for which it is understandable) or sites that want to load JS from so many places that I simply can't be bothered figuring out which ones to whitelist.
    - ajdude 5y ago
      Some websites like Quora would go so far as to just lock me completely out with a blank page that simply says "Please enable Javascript and refresh the page to continue" I have trouble believing that they absolutely /need/ JavaScript to load answers to random questions on what seems like a relatively static page.
jay3ss 5y ago
That didn't work for me. Going to incognito mode worked, but it's very annoying to have to do these workarounds, even if they are minor

runawaybottle 5y ago

I think it’s a choice to monetize your writings. Medium doesn’t force you to put your stuff behind a paywall. We need to stop blaming Medium and realize the authors wanted to monetize.

zerop 5y ago
One can not associate it to author always. see below https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24314481 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24314481 I see some of the famous company’s tech blogs on medium have posts behind paywall. Do you think they would put it behind paywall to make money from blog post.. For example - https://netflixtechblog.com/empowering-the-visual-effects-community-with-the-netfx-platform-35fdf604909c https://netflixtechblog.com/empowering-the-visual-effects-co...
runevault 5y ago
I could be wrong but even if you choose not to join the system I think it might still count against views. But you can dig into the story settings and get a referrer link that does not eat page views.

ivanche 5y ago

In situations like these, Bypass Paywalls extension for Firefox comes really handy! Especially in combination with uMatrix and uBlock Origin.

antman 5y ago
For Android Firefox has disabled almost all addons so the same solution is Kiwi browser that can load chrome addons (got the solution here on HN)
CharlesW 5y ago
> Bypass Paywalls extension for Firefox There's a few of these. Can anyone confirm that https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bypass-paywalls-firefox/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bypass-paywal... is the "real" one and is safe?
- ivanche 5y ago
  Yes, that's the one.

tomaskafka 5y ago

> It is cheap and easy to set up a blog on your own custom domain. And no one needs Dropbox, because everyone can easily set up some rsync and ftp server

Sindaru 5y ago

You can read it in incognito mode

lwhi 5y ago

Fair enough, but this doesn't have much to do with the article. I don't understand why it's the top comment.

just_one_time_ 5y ago
Because the article is worthless but written by a woman so no one feels they can say anything negative about it.