[HN Gopher] I moved this blog from Medium, here ___________________________________________________________________ I moved this blog from Medium, here Author : giuliomagnifico Score : 172 points Date : 2022-01-23 13:23 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (giuliomagnifico.blog) (TXT) w3m dump (giuliomagnifico.blog) | qudat wrote: | These articles always prompt people to share what blogging | platforms they recommend. I decided to create a list that | references all of the medium alternatives. Happy to add others | that people know about. | | https://listifi.app/u/erock/blogging-platforms | keb_ wrote: | Adding another alternative here: https://write.as/ | | Free, easy, federated, ostensibly open-source and self-hostable: | https://github.com/writefreely | quaintdev wrote: | > Yes, finally I've found the time to buy a VPS and host a Jekyll | blog with a nice comment system | | Do we really need comment section on blogs? The blog comments are | not particularly helpful to have any discussion at least not the | way one can have here on HN, reddit, Twitter, etc,. | | Besides the poor user interface, the users have to sign up to | comment. Why would they sign up when they can have discussions on | above platforms? If one does not implement sign up but allow | users to comment just by entering username (like the way this | blog did) then people start abusing the comment section. | | I think HN/Reddit comment section should be used for discussions | although I would prefer if it could be embedded in blog somehow. | I understand that this is terrible idea if reddit/hn chose to be | walled gardens someday but then do we have other better solution? | vlmutolo wrote: | I agree that having comment sections on blogs can be | problematic. Nobody wants to make an account on a random blog | site just to make a comment, and you need explicit accounts to | stop spam. Comment histories are also nice to have. | | There's an interesting middle ground in this space called | Cactus Comments [0]. They're part of the Matrix ecosystem. The | idea is to create a Matrix "room" for every post so that anyone | with a Matrix account can comment in that room. Then, at the | bottom of the post there's a preview of the most recent | messages in the room, along with (optionally) a text box for | anonymous comments. | | Admittedly, setting this up to be self-hosted is pretty | involved, especially if you're not already with Matrix. But the | Cactus people make it easy to get started with their (free) | public servers. | | [0]: https://cactus.chat/demo/ | rabbits77 wrote: | I agree completely. I disable all comments on my blogs and if | people want to discuss then Twitter or Reddit seem to make much | more sense. | | Otherwise you end up spending a ton of time just removing spam, | never mind trying to make sense of and respond to the comments | that may get randomly left years after the original post. | AlchemistCamp wrote: | I couldn't disagree more. Comments have been a plus on every | blog I've run. I've learned from my readers, been able to | answer their questions and even become friends with a few of | them. | | The idea that every blog comment system should be run by a | multi-billion dollar company like Facebook, Reddit or YC is | _fundamentally at odds with the open web_. | rdtwo wrote: | I do wish there was a way to just transfer ids better between | systems. I don't really want to b have users create an | account every time but no good way to prevent spam. Maybe | h-capcha but even that is cheap to spam. | amelius wrote: | Perhaps Mastodon could be a solution? | jagger27 wrote: | As much as it pains me to mention it here, as I | wholeheartedly do not support it for a number of important | reasons, something like Metamask and an identity on a | blockchain could work for this. | | The more obvious solution is OAuth (or OpenID Connect), and | there are plenty of providers that aren't Apple, Google, | Microsoft, Twitter, or GitHub. | rdtwo wrote: | Yeah I don't really care about I'd but the problem is | spam. Maybe phone text authentication is an alternative, | idk how much that costs to implement though. | fhackenberger wrote: | About 5c per msg, a bit lower for some countries, a bit | higher for others. | rdtwo wrote: | Is there no service out there where you can just buy a | number and use it for text validation | 7steps2much wrote: | You could build one yourself by grabbing some hardware | that includes a modem and grabbing a sim card from a | local provider with "unlimited" text messages. | | Might violate ToS though | quaintdev wrote: | > The idea that every blog comment system should be run by a | multi-billion dollar company like Facebook, Reddit or YC is | fundamentally at odds with the open web. | | Agree but don't you think there needs to be a better way at | handling comments on web. What I do not want is: | | 1. sign up on every blog just to comment | | 2. something like discuss either | | Maybe a federated comment section? | jrockway wrote: | Back when blogs were a thing, my solution was to require | all comments to be PGP signed. No spam, and the people | commenting on my blog all liked that sort of thing, so it | worked quite well. | | The software still exists: | https://github.com/jrockway/angerwhale ("last commit: 15 | years ago". holy shit.) | pjerem wrote: | I comment on some blogs where I just need to enter an | username, optionally my mail address and no account | creation required at all. | | I don't know how those blogs manage spam but there is just | none. So it's totally doable. | | An option I see is to just store a random token in a cookie | and require pre-publish moderation for the first n posts | from this token. | | Your regular commenters are probably just using the same 1 | or 2 devices to read your blog. | kingcharles wrote: | The holy grail the Internet has been looking for since the | Web was launched is a single-sign-on that doesn't suck in | some fundamental way. It is definitely a huge friction | point for commenting on a random blog that you might only | visit one time. | | I totally agree that you shouldn't outsource your blog | comments to someone else though, because what happens when | Facebook decides their commenting system isn't profitable | anymore and kills the product? Half the content on _your_ | web site suddenly vanishes. | theptip wrote: | > Maybe a federated comment section? | | I'd love to see this. For a long time I've been wishing for | some sort of social overlay on top of the web - why can't I | comment with my community on existing articles? Make in- | line annotations and share them? See my friends' | annotations as I read articles? Etc. | | This could be a browser plug-in or perhaps an iframe over | the original content. It could even be implemented as a | protocol that browsers support ("go to your configured | overlay server(s) and load content for the page you are | on") if it were successful enough. This sort of feature | gets better the more streamlined and "baked in" it is. | clairity wrote: | > > "Maybe a federated comment section?" | | > "I'd love to see this. For a long time I've been | wishing for some sort of social overlay on top of the web | - why can't I comment with my community on existing | articles?" | | that's what disqus wanted to be, and we've largely | rejected that because of the privacy and anonymity issues | with disqus. | | a year and a half ago, i did a bit of a dive into | webmentions[0] and bridgy[1] as a federated alternative, | but that doesn't seem to have taken off yet. | | [0]: https://indieweb.org/webmention [1]: | https://brid.gy/ | edgyquant wrote: | Yeah because such a system should be a standardized layer | of the web not something controlled by a single company. | The underlying authentication should probably be stored | on a distributed ledger or set by the government. I've | long thought that social security numbers will end up as | a predecessor to this as the government is already the | one entity that knows everything about us (and you could | still have private browsing that didn't use this layer.) | smoldesu wrote: | ActivityPub would work well for this, as there are | several implementations of the standard, it can be self- | hosted, and is already used in the comment sections of | some video sites. I wonder if someone has already written | an HTML embed that does this exact thing for arbitrary | sites... | theptip wrote: | > that's what disqus wanted to be | | I see what you mean, but perhaps the key difference I see | is that if this is a federated protocol, then you bring | your own identity network (for example, someone in | another sub-thread mentioned that Matrix could support | this usecase). Presumably FB would implement this | protocol if it was popular enough, and replicate FB | comments, but the cipherpunks could use a Matrix server | or whatever privacy-preserving method they prefer. By | promoting it to the level of a protocol you can get | multiple implementations/networks, but without forcing | the communities to be un-discoverable to each other. | (E.g. I might be fine with everybody seeing my public | post, but prefer not to have every website capture my | Disqus ID by virtue of me viewing the page. A bridged | privately-run overlay could meet that requirement.) | | > webmentions[0] and bridgy[1] | | Perfect, thanks - that looks like at least the next | evolutionary step towards what I'm envisioning. | | I think that until native browser-support is added (if it | ever gets there), bridging posts back to "non-protocol- | speakers" by posting comments to the blog itself is | probably the smart move. That way you don't split your | community. But I'd love to see a world where the comments | and content are disaggregated, so that I can just filter | out the garbage "public" comments, or participate in | them, depending on my mood. | egypturnash wrote: | This is a lot of what OpenID was designed for; use an | identity managed by your site or someone you trust to sign | in and own comments elsewhere. | AlchemistCamp wrote: | If you don't want to sign up, then just lurk! | | I often go from just reading the posts to reading posts and | comments to talking about the site elsewhere to signing up | and just posting there. | | Having used federated comment systems, they've been a | complete loss. They increase page load times, lead to more | low-quality drive-by comments and then inevitably | eventually start trying to load their ads on my page. | | The one exception is crypto sites, where people just log in | with their wallet creds. Those are pseudonymous, shared | across sites and have very frictionless UX. That would be a | highly polarizing choice for a non-crypto-focused site, | though. | 3np wrote: | Got any links to such crypto sites where they're used for | auth for comments and social? It's something I've been | theorizing for years, would be great to see in the wild. | AlchemistCamp wrote: | https://bitclout.com | 3np wrote: | Cheers. It looks like it directly answers my question but | not quite what I had in mind (pushes for linking Google | account and email; requires phone number verification for | the "free" signup airdrop to get the platform-specific | coins required to participate; frankly looks quite | sketchy and faux-decentralized) | cuteboy19 wrote: | It's the equivalent of sharing your bank account number | with scammysitedotcom. Even if there are no security | implications, sharing your entire financial history with | any website is very privacy hostile. | 3np wrote: | Not necessarily. You should use a different account | (preferably one with 0 transaction history, if no on- | chain txes are needed) than your main financial account | (and really, anyone not living paycheck to paycheck | should have more than one of those in the first place. | Cold/hot, have a separate one for any defi activities, | use a new one for each L2, etc) | | Just like you may not have the same email for job | applications and dodgy e-commerce, or bring all your cash | and cards with you in a purse to the nightclub. | | (GP did say "shared across sites", which should be a very | deliberate decision and not the default. UX needs to | improve to have better privacy by default. I could | imagine Metamask defaulting to generating and connecting | a unique address for each domain, requiring manually | selecting accounts to have them shared) | tfsh wrote: | Comment based systems built on top of existing platforms | such as Matrix may be interesting. | | For want of a better word there's a "misconception" that | the Matrix protocol can only be used for chat apps, but | instead it's defined a fully open, federated and encrypted | event transmission service which can be used for any type | of multiuser application. | mxuribe wrote: | 100% THIS! I believe (hope!) that as more people | understand that the matrix protocol is *not only* a chat | protocol, but far more than that, then we will see many | more different ideas flourish. There are already ideas | for leveraging matrix for a blog...so why not for | commenting, and other scenarios? | [deleted] | [deleted] | anthropodie wrote: | This is already implemented https://cactus.chat/ | | Relevant discussion: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26371813 | hiptobecubic wrote: | What is wrong with discuss? Seems like exactly what you're | asking for. | ecliptik wrote: | You can use Mastodon for comments on static sites with a | bit of javascript. | | https://joelchrono12.netlify.app/blog/how-to-add-mastodon- | co... | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25570268 | ivanmontillam wrote: | > _I think HN /Reddit comment section should be used for | discussions although I would prefer if it could be embedded in | blog somehow._ | | I've thought of this as well, but then I read on the HN | Guidelines that: _Please don 't use HN primarily for promotion. | It's ok to post your own stuff occasionally, but the primary | use of the site should be for curiosity._ [0] | | So unless every post you have complies with HN Guidelines, I | don't think we'll ever see this. | | [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | theamk wrote: | All the rules say is you should not submit your own blog | posts yourself. But if someone else submits it, you are | welcome to link to it, and perhaps even embed (I think there | is an API to access HN data?) | | I can imagine a "smart" blog which periodcally checks HN if | the post has been submitted (or maybe verifiers visitors' | Refere headers?) If no submission is found, the "comments" | link points to HN submission page. If yes, the "comments" | link points to existing discussion. | edgyquant wrote: | I think so that way people stumbling on it etc can give | feedback to the writer. I often will hit some technical blog | that mostly answers my question and then someone in the | comments will correct the author or even ask a question that | further expands on what the blog post is about. | reedciccio wrote: | giuliomagnifico wrote: | Yes we need it because on some posts, like a tutorial, can be | useful ask to the original poster some infos. | | You don't have to sign up, I disabled it, you can also make an | anonymous comment. | | PS: if we don't need the comments, then why you commented here? | :-) | quaintdev wrote: | > PS: if we don't need the comments, then why you commented | here? :-) | | I never said we don't need comments. We probably do not need | it on blog. | | > You don't have to sign up, I disabled it, you can also make | an anonymous comment. | | As I mentioned in my comment the disadvantage of that is | people abuse it. | design-of-homes wrote: | " _Do we really need comment section on blogs?_ " | | I used to write a blog and the comments that readers posted | were always a valuable part of the blog. Comments don't require | sign-up depending on the settings of your blog (mine did not | require sign-up). | | Blogs without the ability to post comments are often static | site blog generators - one of the reasons why I don't use them. | (I don't consider embedding Disqus a suitable option for | comments - a unpleasant experience for readers.) | | A frequent occurrence: a blog has no commenting ability and | instead the blog author encourages readers to discuss their | blog entry on Twitter(?!), or Hacker News or some other | discussion forum. For some authors discussion is not very | important - it's more about sharing the story to as many sites | as possible. | mattarm wrote: | HN and Reddit are already walled gardens today, in the sense | that they are in no way federated with other sites, and they | both reserve the right to delete content at any point. There | isn't much different between a blog that links to a Facebook | post asking people to "discuss this post on Facebook" than | doing the same with HN or Reddit. | theamk wrote: | Hard disagree. | | There are plenty of reasons to avoid Facebook specfically - | tracking across the web, real name policy, per-user | algorithmic feed, selling info, and many other things. None | of them apply to HN, and I am pretty sure most of them don't | apply to reddit either. | coffeefirst wrote: | My favorite way to do this is to encourage people to email me | their comments. If anyone has something to add to the | discussion I may ask for permission to quote them in a | "Responses" sections, or more often, if they write their own | post I'll link to it. | | Why do this? Well, for one, it gives me absolutely quality | control over my website. I am the final arbiter of what I want | to present and how I want to present it. | | But this also changes the _shape_ of the comments; it is not a | public remark into the void, it is a letter to the author. I | 've been amazed and the quality and thoughtfulness in some of | these notes. | theamk wrote: | And this is why websites like HN exist, and why people use | them to discover new blogs :) | | A lot of times I am reading something, and think: "That's a | dangerous advice! Don't do this unless you really have to!" | If I post this as HN comment, I will get somr responses, | maybe confirming my point, or perhaphs saying that I am wrong | and that original advice was good after all. And either way, | future readers will be able to read whole discussion and make | their own judgement. | | But if the author asks people to email, I will not bother. | Unless my arguments are so good as to convince original | author, they will just "disappear" - no one else will read | them or respond to them. | cedsam wrote: | did you consider github pages? | giuliomagnifico wrote: | Yes but GitHub is "another garden", surely is way more open | than Medium but you still have to rely on other resources | (Microsoft), you are not the true owner of your content. | | Instead, using my own VPS I can have the full control on my | blog (yeah there are still the laws obviously). | | Anyway Jekyll has some limitations with GitHub, but is a lot | easier to setup, especially for the comments and builds. | hiptobecubic wrote: | Given that you have all your content locally and can push | whatever you want as long as it's static, it seems like the | only part you "don't own" is the maintenance. | giuliomagnifico wrote: | Not quite. If you write something that violates the TOS of | GitHub your content can be removed, also if someone flags | you for some reason. | | You rely always on a third party service. | shagie wrote: | GitHub pages with a custom domain? And then if you do run | afoul of GitHub you could move your Jekyll site to | somewhere else. | | Until then, you've got hosting and maintenance handled by | someone else. | hiptobecubic wrote: | Sorry, yes, this is mostly what I meant. If you have your | own domain you can pretty easily just move things around. | ahelwer wrote: | I use gitlab pages which lets you use any static site generator | (not just jekyll) and is otherwise just as good as github | pages. I use hugo for ahelwer.ca although I really should get | around to putting effort into learning/customizing the site | instead of using the default gitlab theme. | etimberg wrote: | I believe GitHub pages is getting close to allowing any SSG | to be used via GitHub actions. | https://github.blog/changelog/2021-12-16-github-pages- | using-... | softwarebeware wrote: | Good on you! Medium can go ahead and go out of business in my | opinion. It makes the web worse rather than better ImE, like | Pinterest. | ycombinete wrote: | I'm out of the loop on this. What's wrong with medium? | Nextgrid wrote: | It tries to paywall content to recoup its millions in VC | investment. | ivanmontillam wrote: | Some of the greatest posts are paywalled, and the user | experience for it it's terrible. The benefit of Medium is the | exposure and that if you're good enough, you can actually be | paid via Medium Partners Program, but on the other hand, | these benefits are at the expense of decentralization and | owning your content. You don't own your content when you | publish on Medium. | | Once it happened to me that a post wasn't open to read and it | claimed I could read it for free if I signed up. Then I went | ahead and signed up, and it was still paywalled[0]. The | experience was frustrating. | | [0]: https://mobile.twitter.com/IvanMontillaM/status/13480075 | 9206... | jpalomaki wrote: | Could it be that the possibility of making some money with | the content actually encourages people to create better | content? | ivanmontillam wrote: | Yes, I'm not against profitting off your content, though | you can make money with your own blog as well, with the | upfront cost of having to build your own audience, of | course. I'm not saying it's easy, just saying it's also | possible without the need giving away your content | rights/ownership. | | What I am against it's to clickbait your readers into | "Sign up to read for free", then you sign up and find out | you still have to pay. It leaves you with a poor taste | impression, because of the bait and switch dark pattern | right there, after you've given out your precious | personal information at the sign up form. | stavros wrote: | If you want a blog of your own, no need to get a VPS or anything. | You can just fork my repo here: | | https://gitlab.com/stavros/quicksite | | You can even edit your posts right on GitLab, so you don't need | knowledge of git. | Andrew_nenakhov wrote: | It's not your 'own' blog if you run it on someone's service. | Karunamon wrote: | On the contrary. If it's on a git repo you have a copy of, it | doesn't matter who's service is being used. Migration becomes | trivial. | | This is probably the single greatest upside of static site | generators. | Andrew_nenakhov wrote: | If you have a copy of it, you have a backup. Which is good, | but not really groundbreaking. You still depend on the | hosting provider who lets you keep your stuff on their | servers. | Karunamon wrote: | The internet is an interconnected series of "someone's | service". Your definition is so broad as to be a | meaningless tautology. | | I host _my_ blog on web space that I pay for. If they | stop hosting me, I move. This takes literally one line in | a post commit hook to effect. | theamk wrote: | You are always going to depend on someone - web host, or | VPS host, or colo service, or ISP (if the server is in | your house). Not to mention domain registrar. | | The webpage is "yours" as long as you are the one in | control of content, can migrate anywhere else without | users knowing, and third parties can only disable your | site but not edit. Both github pages and machine in the | basement satisfy that rule. | quickthrower2 wrote: | An idea for someone. Set up a site "adiosmedium.com" or whatever | with a list of these blogs, and an RSS aggregator link of all of | them. Take submissions based on old medium link and new blog | link. Proof being a post on the medium link saying "i'm moving to | ...", and a clear history of good posting. | | Fun low/no-code project for someone maybe! | adrianvoica wrote: | OP, please, spellcheck your articles. I found so many typos and | spelling errors in that article, I don't even know where to | start. So, I'll just start with this: please use a spellchecker - | they're free! Otherwise, keep up the good work and be free (self- | host / own your stuff)! There's a back-to-roots movement going | on, where people want to own their stuff. The more, the better! | rambambram wrote: | I found it refreshing, to be honest. It didn't take long for me | to find out what "sintax" and "shure" meant. ;) | giuliomagnifico wrote: | Thanks, I checked and edited, hope now has less errors, sorry | but english is not my first language. | aftergibson wrote: | I did this at the end of last year, exported all my data from | medium, ran medium-2-md, cleaned up a few posts and was away. | | I now use Pelican with GitHub Pages and any new posts are | generated from a single org file. It's a really frictionless | workflow. | | You can even have medium import your new posts with a link back | to your own site and if you want your site to look like medium, | medius is a nice theme but needed a little tweaking to get it | working with the latest pelican version. | | All in all a fairly painless migration. | imagetic wrote: | I am currently in the process of moving things over from hosted | services to Hugo / Netlify. | | For the last month I've been messing around with various ssg's | and jamstack solutions. I spent a week tinkering with 11ty and | loved a lot of my time with it and would love to explore it more, | but after a few days it ended up being far too complex, since my | goal is to focus on publishing work over personal website | development. Sometime I always struggle to find a balance with | and why services/social media probably won out for me for so many | years. Hugo has just been a more straight forward approach. | | Like the author, I've been thinking a lot about my work and where | it's published/owned/controlled by and determined that I want to | port all my relevant social post over the years back to my | website for archival purposes. Maybe a Posts/Feed type website, | more like tumblr, that is self contained and relatively simple to | move/manage and maintain. | giuliomagnifico wrote: | > I spent a week tinkering with 11ty and loved a lot of my time | with it and would love to explore it more, but after a few days | it ended up being far too complex | | Yes, unfortunately is not easy, if you want a more fast and | easy way is use GitHub Pages. With Jekyll is very fast to set | up (like 15-20 mins), I think it's the same with Hugo (I've | never deleved in Hugo). | | You don't have the full control on your content like if it's | hosted on your server, because you have to rely on GitHub, but | you have your content and is a lot better than any other | blogging platform and is also easier to maintain. | | For me was a goal to understand how Jekyll works self-hosted, I | love learn new thing, that's also why I moved my blog to my | VPS. | [deleted] | mcntsh wrote: | I remember when Medium first came out, it was "all about the | words". Today it couldn't be further from that. Medium articles | are slow, janky, filled with pop ups and paywalls. | | The faster Medium dies the better. | slig wrote: | Can't wait for they to go the way of Posterous. | gnicholas wrote: | It would be funny if Medium were acquired by Twitter, given | Ev's history with both companies. | | Relatedly, long live Posthaven! | gfykvfyxgc wrote: | If you want people to read your writing, don't put it in a walled | garden. | giuliomagnifico wrote: | Yes, I agree. The only trouble is where all the people are | inside this garden.... (that -fortunately- is not the case of | Medium but other socials are very centralized in one name: | Meta). For that every little effort to open the fences of some | gardens is precious. Translated: go away from any sort of | centralized web. | jfengel wrote: | If you want people to pay you for writing, you end up doing | something. Right now "something" seems to consist of walling it | off, begging for donations, or running ads. Everybody would | love a better option. | | If all you want is to be read, you have more options. But it's | still hard for people to find you, since everyone else has the | exact same options. Turns out lots of people will write for | free. | CarrotCodes wrote: | I'm a big fan of the GitHub Pages + Jekyll + Cloudflare "stack" | for getting a fast, cheap (free, usually) website or blog up and | running. | | If you're strong in a particular ecosystem you can switch Jekyll | out for something like Hugo, but Jekyll continues to be rock | solid for my purposes, and there's usually a guide or plugin for | additional features. | hiptobecubic wrote: | Why bother with cloudflare here? | comprev wrote: | DNS hosting? | CarrotCodes wrote: | I'll usually want to use a custom domain, like carrot.blog, | in front of a GitHub Pages site. But it's not strictly | necessarily if you're OK with something.github.io | colinarms wrote: | Another Medium alternative is Papyrus: https://papyrus.so. | | Privacy-first, simplicity and speed are the core tenets. Export | posts at any time, send posts via newsletters, and no feature- | bloat. | | Disclaimer: I built Papyrus because I was fed up with Medium, | Wordpress and Substack. | DonHopkins wrote: | That NFT hype makes it look like yet another get-rich-quick | pyramid scheme to me. Can you please clearly explain exactly | what you're using NFTs for that you couldn't easily and less | destructively implement some better way, without burning so | much coal, causing cancer, and destroying the environment? | | If your business can't grow and succeed without shilling NFTs, | then you don't have anything of actual value. NFTs aren't magic | pixie dust that make everyone rich. Unless you're running a | money laundering operation. | meowface wrote: | It's odd to me that people focus so much on Ethereum NFTs' | environmental impact. It's certainly not good, but it's | currently nowhere close to Bitcoin's consumption, and within | 1 - 3 years will likely be reduced to the cost of running | something like the Tor network: https://ethereum.org/static/6 | b5219d652112f88202e9768e27f5db1.... (Especially since there's | no specific marginal energy cost to minting or trading an | NFT, so it can't be compared to something like choosing | whether or not to drive a combustion engine car.) | | To me the massive concern is all the financial fuckery. | Anyone trying to shoehorn tokens (fungible, non-fungible, or | semi-fungible) into something is almost always the reddest of | flags. | | For one, the proposed "token-gating" makes no sense. What's | to prevent someone from buying one token and then sharing the | private key with a million people? You can try to create a | sophisticated token-sharing detection system with invasive | fingerprinting and tracking and proxy/VPN detection and such, | but it's endless whack-a-mole and it's barely feasible for | the world's top companies, on top of being the antithesis of | what cryptocurrency people stand for. This is why consensus | algorithms like proof of work exist in the first place: you | can never ensure one identifier (a private key, an IP, | whatever) = one person. They have to sacrifice something | fungible and scarce. | | And "Your super-fans can collect NFTs of your published | content." Just... what? Why? This strikes me as ridiculous | and, frankly, cringe-inducing. It makes the whole thing feel | gross. | Ensorceled wrote: | > It's odd to me that people focus so much on Ethereum | NFTs' environmental impact. It's certainly not good, but | it's currently nowhere close to Bitcoin's consumption ... | | In a conversation about NFTs why is it odd to focus on | NFT's environmental impact? Most people who hate NFTs also | hate bitcoin, I assume they also hate racism, child labour, | and COVID. Do you also find it odd that people don't | mention their feelings about those issues when talking | about NFTs? | DonHopkins wrote: | I totally agree with meowface that bigger problem with | people shilling Bitcoin and ICOs and NFTs and other shams | is that they're obvious snake oil salesmen pushing get- | rich-quick pyramid schemes, but when trying to deprogram | cryptocurrency cult members, it's easier to focus of the | more tangible irrefutable problems like the environmental | and heath impacts, and ask them to justify why they don't | give a shit about the environment and the health problems | of burning coal. Because simply explaining to them that | they've been duped by scammers is a lot harder sell -- | they've bought into the cult and are shilling it them | selves, so they don't want to admit it. The same way it's | harder convince a Trump supporter that he's a con-man, | and easier to get them to admit that they don't think | injecting bleach and inserting an ultraviolet flashlight | up their rectum is a good way of curing Covid-19. | | If course there will always be a round of stuck excuses | like "some day <insert name of scam here> will be | environmentally friendly" or "Proof of Stake", but those | are bullshit and easier to shoot down (because they're | circular arguments, analogous to Trump's excuse that he's | going to publish his wonderful health care plan any day | now, and "Proof of Stake" is just Oligarchy on Steroids | that certainly isn't going to help any starving artists, | and any useful financial services end up being as | centralized as Visa anyway) than convincing somebody | they're not a member of a cult and they're not going to | get rich quick if only they shill the cult's products a | little harder. | meowface wrote: | Sorry, maybe I worded my comment poorly. I'm not trying | to say "why are you talking about Ethereum and not | Bitcoin instead?", or something like that. | | Here, it's a tiny bit like trying to link NFTs to racism | because there's a certain subset of cryptocurrency | enthusiasts who are Nazis. (And some do say this.) Not | the best analogy, I know, but in this case Ethereum is | commonly thought of as environmentally unfriendly | basically due to guilt by association with Bitcoin. | | Ethereum does have an excessive environmental impact, | because proof of work is fundamentally environmentally | unfriendly. But the point is it isn't a very big impact | right now and probably won't ever be an impact because | before it can reach that point there'll probably be a | shift to an algorithm that reduces the energy cost to | that of any other ordinary software. And even if it did | pose such an impact right now, NFTs pose no direct | marginal energy cost (though they do so indirectly by | encouraging more use of the network, which raises the | incentive to mine). | | In my opinion, there are so many other good arguments | against (most/nearly all) NFTs that when you pull this | one out, it instantly causes the opposition to flag you | as someone not worth listening to. Especially when it's | couched in dramatic language, like that NFTs are "burning | so much coal, causing cancer, and destroying the | environment", as the previous commenter wrote. | hiptobecubic wrote: | "It's bad but it's fine because I'm sure that everyone | will do something about it before it becomes a problem," | isn't very satisfying. | ahelwer wrote: | Not an NFT guy but according to https://papyrusnft.io/ | they're enabling non-Ethereum chains which will address the | environmental concerns. | meowface wrote: | >https://papyrusnft.io | | It's good they're trying to find less environmentally- | costly alternatives, but the mere existence of this domain | makes the whole enterprise feel _much_ more sketchy and | greasy to me, honestly. Not to mention the content on it. | bartread wrote: | > Another Medium alternative is Papyrus: https://papyrus.so. | | Right. But even ignoring all that NFT stuff that others are | commenting on, isn't your offering with Papyrus just somebody | else's playground _not owned by the content creator_? Whereas | the author has gone for a setup that fundamentally they own: | they could move it anywhere, not tied to any provider, pretty | easily. There are a ton of options for hosting a jekyll blog. | | No disrespect to what you've built with Papyrus, because it | does look good, but you've completely missed the point. Isn't | this post more about taking back personal ownership and control | of content than ceding to yet another "platform"? Here's the | third paragraph: | | _Because I want that my content is my content and not my | content on the "Medium's hands", plus Medium is not what was in | the beginning._ | | Some of us don't want a "Medium alternative": we want ownership | and control. Papyrus might be great now but, guaranteed, if it | becomes as successful as Medium, I seriously doubt it will | avoid devolving into a similar mess. I'd be happy to be proven | wrong. | | Again, with no disrespect to the quality of what you've built, | in this context screw yet another company that wants to line | its founders' pockets off the back of other peoples' content. I | wish you well, but I don't believe what you're offering is what | the author of the post is talking about (though it will no | doubt suit some, and that's OK). | dheera wrote: | > Whereas the author has gone for a setup that fundamentally | they own: they could move it anywhere, not tied to any | provider, pretty easily | | I haven't looked into Papyrus but there are many non-Medium | platforms that let you export your data easily in standard | formats. | | Personally my biggest issue with Medium is them imposing a | paywall on _my_ writing without giving me a decent salary for | it, OR hiding my content. Not a good choice. | giuliomagnifico wrote: | 100% agree, I couldn't replied better! | p4bl0 wrote: | > Privacy-first, _simplicity and speed_ are the core tenets. | Export posts at any time, send posts via newsletters, and _no | feature-bloat_. | | Then why oh why would you jump on the web3/NFT train? | hiptobecubic wrote: | Growth? | cultofmetatron wrote: | I saw that their content editor looks to have better support | for code editing. I'm sold | colinarms wrote: | Yup - we're using rich-markdown-editor for the content | editor. Full support for code and syntax highlighting. | GitHub: https://github.com/outline/rich-markdown-editor, | editor demo: https://rich-markdown-editor- | demo.onrender.com/?path=/story/... | 2Gkashmiri wrote: | richmarkdown looks archived. do you know any active forks | or an alternative? | xmorse wrote: | If you are searching for a Medium alternative checkout Notaku | https://notaku.website/product/blog | | It uses Notion as CMS, the blog posts are stored in a Notion | database with additional properties like description .etc | | Disclaimer: I am the author, let me hear any feedback if you try | it | ohmahjong wrote: | Absolutely _not_ to be confused with Nutaku (NSFW). | xmorse wrote: | Didn't know anything about it | Syonyk wrote: | I moved my blog off Google-hosted Blogger a year or so ago, and | the last thing I wanted was another place that would go | directions I don't care for and have to migrate off again. | Moving blog hosts is a huge pain in everything. | | I went to self-hoseted/self-rendered Jekyll, with Discourse | embedding handling comments, and it's been working fairly well | so far. Cloudflare caching covers traffic spikes fairly | competently, and if I want to host the content on something | else, I literally just have to upload the rendered files. | | As a bonus, it now works perfectly well without cookies or | Javascript. Not perfectly, there are some JS features that | improve things, but it should render and be entirely readable, | with images, without JS. | xmorse wrote: | This is one of the reasons i am not implementing a rich text | editor and instead i am using Notion as CMS. | | A lot of individuals and companies are already using Notion | and this makes it easier for them to write blog posts with | it. | | I know that for developers like me and you markdown is | everything we need but non technical people need something | more high level, just the act of embedding an image in | markdown is very difficult for them | CitrusFruits wrote: | Looks cool! I'm not a much of a blogger so I'm probably not | your target audience, but I've love to see more of an ecosystem | around notion. | | I would say I'm personally aittle dubious of the only two | options being free and $50 a month. You might want to consider | another price point in there in between. Although I'd do see | that you're still in beta so I recognize the prices might not | be final anyways. | valryon wrote: | This is one letter swap from something very popular but | completely different... | fleddr wrote: | I think the hate for Medium is really overstated, it's quite | absurd for people wanting it to die altogether, just because it | has some annoying UX. | | Everybody wanting to mess with self hosting a blog very much | should do so, but to some it's just a minor side thing of low | importance, and in that case, Medium serves a purpose. It's free | and you can even link your domain to it, also for free. The | writing experience is quite good and you can publish your | articles for free or behind the paywall. There's no ads. | | We really live in the age of entitlement to not be thankful that | it is an option, even if it's not for you. Instead, we wish for | it to "die". | | Subjective as it is, the new blog is harder to read and looks | worse than the new one. It has no internal search. It won't feed | into any recommendation engine, there's no audience management, | feature pages, newsletters (I assume) and a whole bunch of things | you get at Medium. It's now impossible to follow the blog | automatically, except for the very small group of people still | using RSS readers. | | So what have you achieved exactly? You spent time to make | something worse, not better. If it's just for technical | tinkering, fine. If it's to "liberate your content", this too is | a vague claim. Medium doesn't delete content and has an export | option allowing you to back up posts should you want to. | | Again, this is not a love letter to Medium. | yreg wrote: | Earlier this week SundaeSwap, the first DEX on Cardano launched | its production, which was a big event for them. | | On the day of the launch Medium blocked their blog which | contained vital information. | | The crypto people often say "If you don't hold the keys, you | don't own the coins". Something similar could be said about using | platforms like Medium. | ivanmontillam wrote: | Congratulations. A big win for Internet decentralization! (It's | not sarcasm, I'm all in for having your own space on the | Internet). | | I invite you to try Grav CMS[0], it's what I use for my personal | blog[1]. | | Grav is a flat-file CMS, it doesn't use RDBMS. It's highly | performant. I also have CloudFlare in front of it, but it was | already faster than the typical WordPress you see elsewhere. | | Grav also adheres to the latest PHP version, so you don't have to | carry along legacy syntax around like other CMSes. Its error | pages are comprehensive and the stack traces are actually | readable. | | I personally think it's the best out there technically speaking, | the best of both worlds (Flat-file and at the same time, dynamic | instead of compiling the build every new post), the only drawback | is that its plugin ecosystem it's still in the early stages, so | if you're to create marketing landing pages or similar, you'll | still fall short there. | | [0] https://getgrav.org [1] https://www.ivanmontilla.com | | EDIT: Typos. | shantnutiwari wrote: | As someone who is not a PHP developer-- I couldnt even get Grav | installed. There is a lot of assumptions in the install | process. | | After 40 minutes of error message after error message, and | googling obsure PHP dev tools/practices, I just quit. | | So yes, use Grav, if you already deep in PHP world. | ivanmontillam wrote: | Sad to hear that was your experience. | | It's supposed to work just by extracting the .zip or .tar | into the 'public_html' directory. At least that was my | experience, I run it from the cheapest cPanel shared hosting | I could find (the ones of $3/month). My cPanel shared hosting | provider also provides me with SSH access, and I got used to | it as well. | | I could have gone with the VPS route, but the typical cPanel | hosting come with sensible defaults that just works like it's | supposed to. | | What I did was to download one of these skeletons (prefilled | with data) and start from there. It's almost 99.9% guaranteed | to work that way. | | The Admin plugin helps a lot to reduce that obscurity you | mention. | | Full disclosure: I'm not a PHP developer as well, I know | nothing from it, I only know Python, some C++11 onwards and | Delphi. | [deleted] | markdown wrote: | Wow, that's a blast from the past. Great to see Grav still | going, and still lead by Andy Miller. | | Andy Miller was the founding design lead for Joomla! CMS. He | also started the first template/theme shop and club long before | there was anything like it in the CMS world. | | Grav grew out of Rockettheme. | ivanmontillam wrote: | I love RocketTheme and Gantry Framework! | | Whenever I have to create a website, the first theme shop I | check to see if there's anything I like is RocketTheme. | giuliomagnifico wrote: | I'll give a look, thanks for the info! | efitz wrote: | What about substack? It solves all the problems that the OP | raises | detaro wrote: | How does substack solve the first point? | collaborative wrote: | Similarly, I recently moved away from Wix to my own bare bones | implementation that looks exactly the same | | Went from an insights score of 31/100 to 100/100 | | Only chose Wix to start with because I had no time to set up a | website (at all) | githubholobeat wrote: | Anyone on Medium writing about programming languages trends | should also be pre-screened and have their own original (non- | forked) source code repository listed on their profile. Each time | I see a Medium article in form of "Top [insert number] [insert | topic] to [insert a verb]", it nudges me ever closer to canceling | my subscription. | aklemm wrote: | Every effort to maintain a personal website is inspiring. I love | it. There's still a better balance to be had re: maintenance vs. | autonomy, and I hope a hosting/publishing service finds that | someday and offers it in a way that attracts a broad following. | pyrophane wrote: | While Medium is a bit simpler to use than some other | blogging/publishing platforms, the difference isn't all that | much. | | Wasn't the real reason to post on Medium more about | monetization and discovery? | ghaff wrote: | I think there was also a time when many people assumed--not | knowing any better--that something published on Medium was | more authoritative than something on a random personal blog. | I used to sometimes cross-publish to Medium when something | was going to be linked from a company newsletter if we wanted | it on a third-party site. But I haven't done that for a few | years now. | | While it's nothing great, I just use Blogger/Google. It's | free, clean, exportable, and can handle traffic spikes. You | can run ads but don't have to; I don'tI've thought about | moving to Wordpress and went so far as to start a more | focused blog there at one point. But I dropped it and just | continued to use Blogger. | boxed wrote: | It wasn't for me. It was: | | - it looked good | | - it was very easy to _just write_ | | - the lack of customization meants I didn't get stuck for | hours and hours trying to find a template or choose a statist | site generator, or tweak CSS, choose images, etc. | | Ultimately I moved to github pages where at least I had to | get jekyll (which is kinda crap imo, but works), but I have | spent a lot of time tweaking it and I still don't like the | design. (https://kodare.net if you want to see) | rambambram wrote: | I also like your design. | ta988 wrote: | I like your design, simple and efficient. Could put some | separations for your upper right links, if you add an rss | link I'll follow that. | aklemm wrote: | Yeah, I think monetization and discovery were drivers to | Medium. Apparently that comes with a lot of trade-offs in | terms of autonomy. It was hard enough to play ball with | Google as an independent site, and I'm not sure people find | that worthwhile at all any more. | chiefalchemist wrote: | > Additionally, if you create or log into your Medium account | through a third-party platform (such as Apple, Facebook, Google, | or Twitter), we will have access to certain information from that | platform, such as your name, lists of friends or followers, | birthday, and profile picture, in accordance with the | authorization procedures determined by such platform | | This isn't a Medium issue. It's the "price you pay" for the | convenience of such social-based authentication. | donatj wrote: | Mediums descent from shining exemplar of good to questionably | evil was sudden. | hiptobecubic wrote: | I never understood why it was a shining example of good in the | first place. It is a blogging platform. What else does it do? | acdha wrote: | The VCs poured a ton of money into paying popular writers to | write on Medium, which got a lot of attention. That lasted | until everyone learned that the VCs needing to cash out meant | that Medium needed to sell ads and behavioural data, and that | also meant that user-hostile things like dark SEO patterns | were seen as necessary. | mhitza wrote: | It went downhill since its launch. Some things that I enjoyed | when it came out. | | 1. it had any easy way to bring on board a collaborator to | help out with a draft article (without them needing to create | an account, for example). | | 2. it had a clean and minimalist UI, and better editor | experience than tinyMCE and other popular editors at the time | | 3. while the curation process wasn't open (as far as I | recall), I was expecting it to lead towards a centralized | blogging platform (a la reddit) but where personal | submissions are front and center. | krastanov wrote: | For some reason everyone around me was treating it for a | while as if it was a curated source of high quality writing | (and I have seen people brag about writing Medium articles). | I am still confused how anyone saw it as anything more than a | blogging platform. | throwhauser wrote: | It did somehow manage to have a lot of good content, but it | made it too difficult to access. I haven't looked at any | Medium stuff in a long time, but if I recall correctly | highlighting text wouldn't allow you to copy it, but would | allow you to tweet it. Infuriating if you want to save a link | to it and a snippet someplace for your own use. | wepple wrote: | It was a very minimalistic and tidy UX in an age of pop ups, | ads, bloated menus, unecessary features, etc. it was great | for reading and for writing | | Then it became all of those things. It has the distinct | stench of a growth team making all the classic short term | moves to boost DAU | yreg wrote: | Was it? I remember it as a platform that always tried to | force me to signup for a free account even just to read a | blog post. It appeared in the age of Blogger, Tumblr and | Posterous which were much less hostile. | ljm wrote: | Like many VC-backed startups I think it was a bit of a | darling for a while and then there was the inevitable | realisation that something needed to change if it was going | to have a viable business model. | | That's the charitable version. After all, they did amass a | decently sized userbase in its darling stage, all ideological | and disruptive as it was. | | Now it's yet another domain I exclude from search results. | hiptobecubic wrote: | This is what I'm missing. What was ideological and | disruptive about it? It seemed like a status symbol, but | otherwise just a blog. | wooptoo wrote: | If you don't mind getting your hands dirty you can publish a | static blog using Github Actions + AWS S3 + Cloudflare for cheap | - the only cost being the price of the domain per year. | | https://wooptoo.com/blog/github-actions/ | Railworks2 wrote: | One could simplify the entire thing and use GitHub pages or | CloudFlare pages to host Jekyll sites directly from a GitHub | repository ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-01-23 23:00 UTC)