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Comment by JoshMnem | Hacker News Reader

If you're serious about blogging, using Medium is a mistake, especially for programming blogs. Using a static site generator on Netlify is also free, and you maintain full control.

I would not have been able to sell one of my blogs if I had used a platform like Medium or Tumblr.

I've also seen someone's blog get deleted on a different hosted platform without warning and no way to recover the deleted content. If you don't control your application, you are at the mercy of another, unknown person's decisions.

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What about a personal site using Wordpress then repost on Medium for exposure?

you can do that but you should look up canonical linking and seo rules for duplicated content

I wouldn't duplicate the content for SEO reasons, even with canonical URLs. You can get a lot of traffic through search engines and other methods.

I don't like landing on Medium posts. That kind of centralized, fast-food publishing monoculture isn't what the WWW is supposed to be. I don't comment on or "like" anything on Medium either. If it were a relatively small site, it wouldn't be such a problem, but it's becoming inescapable now.

I think that tech culture needs a revamp where people start to focus on DIY freedom again: blogs, websites, OSes, hardware, RSS/Atom (vs. AI feeds), etc.

From your description, it sounds like medium is the next technorati?

Static site don't have comments and analytics.

Sure they can, static site generators can still include client-side javascript.

Nor do you need javascript for basic comments* or analytics.

*if your site is spammed hard enough, javascript may become necessary, but you can try honeypot fields first in pure HTML.

Yes, those are advantages too.

I've got a static blog with both. You don't even need JavaScript for analytics, when using something like GoAccess[0] (I haven't noticed any meaningful differences after switching).

[0] https://goaccess.io/

GoAccess seems like a great tool. Thanks for pointing it out!

They absolutely can, with something like Disqus for comments and Google Analytics or whatever other analytics you like

Or DIY with something like this:

https://github.com/posativ/isso

or this:

https://blog.webkid.io/moving-from-disqus-to-schnack/

You could also install Discourse on a subdomain (quick docker-based install on a $5/month server) and use that for comments.

Or this: https://www.kajmagnus.blog/new-embedded-comments/ (open source like Isso and Schnack, or hosted for those who don't want to install anything)

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