Ask HN: Where do you put your blogs? I'm thinking of doing some blogging on a pretty casual basis and it's got me wondering where people post their blogs. For me, I don't think I'd be blogging frequently enough or with enough of a common theme to warrant setting up my own site. Instead, something like Medium springs to mind as an option - although I'm aware they've had some bad press recently. So bloggers of HN, where do you put your blogs? |
Whatever you do, though, please don't use Medium!
Plus, the initial setup takes just a few minutes. Iterating with these tools is fairly easy, although 11ty would be my preference due to its simplicity.
Yeah I do have a domain I could use for a WordPress site potentially
1. Got rid of custom domains, so you have to use a medium.com one. So if you're hoping to start a blog using Medium as a platform/engine but with your own domain, this is a dealbreaker.
2. Even if you have hundreds of followers, publishing an article on Medium does nothing about surfacing it to any of these followers. Your best bet to distribute the article is still posting on HN and Reddit or Twitter/FB.
3. On a related note, if you're hoping Medium would bring you traffic, it's 100% up to their editorial if they would feature your post on their homepage, email, etc. Probably best not to bet on it.
4. Various UI and UX issues pile up over the years. When you open a Medium article on a mobile on a fresh browser nowadays, you're likely faced with enough popups that cover more than half the screen. It's just not nice.
5. Most people hate their paywall. I don't have a strong opinion here myself.
TBH, most of the draw near the beginning of Medium was how easy it was to start an account and just write stuff, and the writing interface is nice. There has been a number of open source JS projects since then to emulate the Medium editor. IMO there really isn't any reason for anyone new to start on Medium anymore.
Wordpress is great too, though isn't as plug-and-play as you might expect.
I would avoid the temptation to build & host your own site, as your goal is to _blog_, not code.
Also, consider capturing email addresses and sending all of your new posts to your subscribers.
It's very motivating to see a small, but growing list of people who want you send them everything you write.
Here's the simple design I use if you want to replicate it: https://stewfortier.com/subscribe (it gets about a 30% conversion rate)
Happy writing!
If personal, any self-hosted platform will work (WordPress, blogger.com, or Webflow).
If business, you can post articles on your site. Some well-known marketers only post once a month. But they do a ton of promotion + optimize to rank in search. From what I've observed, it's not necessary to keep a consistent posting schedule, but it helps in other ways like building up the habit. More in-depth content tends to increase search traffic. That's why you'll see bigger brands like Shopify write a ton of articles daily.
The advantage of using another platform is it gives you the possibility you'll get some of their traffic if you understand their system.
In my opinion, don't worry about your platform. Use something that works. The bigger issue is how to get your blog found. And whatever platforms you use, your URL structure should be maintained so that links don't rot and readers can still find you. I made the mistake of going from blogger.com to self-hosted WordPress. I should have just started with WordPress.
I wrote a post about it here: https://www.ethanaa.com/blog/conversion-to-static-site-with-...