Stapling elsewhere [too]

(edited to add: I may change this policy, in which case I'll delete this post. If you have any suggestions for a good blogging platform, please leave me a comment.)

edit 2: I've been convinced to keep posting long-form stuff here, but please bear in mind that I probably won't be editing links in. Or I might do the footnotes thing if there's only a couple, or something.

Anyway, here's a mirror list of where I write also; the content is the same.

Substack
Medium
Write.as

You may be asking if there's any meaningful difference. The content is the same, but the sites have their pros and cons. Substack and Write.as allow e-mail subscriptions (and I don't charge for anything on either). Medium just lets you follow writers on the site, and you have to have a Medium account to do so. Medium allows comments with an account, and Substack allows them but I'm not sure what the requirements are. Write.as does not allow comments, but you can always e-mail me (my address is on my write.as page).

Aesthetically, Medium and Substack are both black-on-white. Write.as uses a light-on-dark scheme if you prefer that. Beyond that, it's just whatever you find most comfortable for reading.

Medium and Substack also have a lot more embedded nonsense, trackers, and what-have-you. uBlockOrigin registers one blocked tracker on Substack, but 28(!) on Medium. Write.as is generally better, although I embedded a YouTube video in one of my posts and that brought along a host of unfortunate things. My Write.as theme also pulls a font from Google Fonts, so bear that in mind.

[I hope this isn't too much of a hassle for any of my regular readers, but as I said it was just getting to be too much to post to four different spots all with their own unique formatting requirements. Meanwhile, the Midnight just doesn't feel like the place to shout a whole essay, or even to leave copies on the bar. It's better for smaller conversations, which after all can still lead to big things.] <-- no longer applies

rosie88

Hi,

I haven't been on much because life has kept me busy but I did read this post and I would like to recommend telegra.ph It is dencentralize, minimum, simple and amazing. I have used it myself three times and enjoyed it. You can add images, embed links, etc. basically you can do anything to it really. You can post long blogs or super short ones doesn't matter and it's all free. I would suggest though that you copy the URL once you publish your blog post and paste it in a notepad just so you can refer back to it. Thank you, I find writing, even if it's only for my own reading, refreshing, cathartic and liberating.

zampano

Interesting, I'll keep that place in mind. For now, I'm content to do here plus the three sites I listed above. But that seems like a good site for sharing content on a more ad hoc basis.

rosie88

As I said please take your time, just like finding an actual house to make a home takes time and a lot of soul searching so does finding a "home" that feels right for you on the big and small net. Good luck, I hope to return and contribute here soon.

m15o

As long as you keep writing, I’ll be happy to read you from anywhere! Have a look at smol.pub if you haven’t already. :)

zampano

Oh yeah, I meant to add: I have seen smol.pub, and I think it's a neat site. I just don't have a place for still another blog host (I'm near overwhelmed with what I'm doing now, as I said). I hope it proves to be successful!

zampano

Thanks m15o, I appreciate it!

nargran

It's nothing of my business, but why not just posting on a simple, static blog or website? Substack is full of JS and tracking nonsense, as you say, and Medium tries to force you pay after a certain number of reads. You don't even need to self host if you don't want to, WordPress, Blogger or even Tumblr would already be much better than any of those. I'm just saying this because in my still very short stay in the Pub I've enjoyed your longer writings, and it would be a pity to have them buried in one of those places.

zampano

I've thought about that, but haven't really found a good fit there, either. WordPress is massively insecure, so I don't trust that, and I'm not sure that it or any of the other major platforms would be better from a tracking/lack of minimalism standpoint. (I just checked, and my adblock finds 9 trackers on a tumblr blog.) FWIW, Medium only charges to read content where the author has chosen to accept paid subscriptions, which I haven't done (and don't intend to). But your point is well taken.

Ultimately it comes down to wanting someplace where I can be found by people who don't already know to look for me.

From a lack of tracking standpoint, write.as is good. They self-host their analytics (which adblock takes care of anyway), so all you'd have to deal with is the Google Font embed.

I'll think about posting my longer stuff here, I just find it a pain as I said to have to re-format things to display properly. The main thing is links, which I can't do inline here, and that makes for clunkier writing (or just not using them, which I'm not sure is better).

Is there another platform that I haven't thought of?

nargran

Ultimately it comes down to wanting someplace where I can be found by people who don't already know to look for me.

Yes, I agree that that's more difficult when you self host, or if you use some more obscure service.

From a lack of tracking standpoint, write.as is good

I'll check it out, I'm less familiar with it than with the other two.

Is there another platform that I haven't thought of?

There is https://writefreely.org , which is a federated blogging platform. I don't have first hand experience with it though, so I don't really know whether it has an active community, but maybe it's worth it to take a look.

I just find it a pain as I said to have to re-format things to display properly.

That does sound like a hassle, especially after having done it many times. Do you think the reformatting could be automated, or does how it is redacted have to change substantially as well?

zampano

Funny you should mention writefreely, as that is the back-end that write.as uses (sort of like wordpress.org vs. wordpress.com).

I think for now I've been convinced to keep posting stuff here; maybe I'll just ignore links and hope for the best :)

nargran

Glad to hear that!

Also I didn't know writefreely is write.as' backend. I've been checking out write.as and I must say I quite like it :)