How should my company publish its developer blog?

Question

We're thinking about starting a dev blog. I don't think we want to implement anything custom, and I know Medium is pretty bad these days, and particularly unpopular with people in these circles. Would Substack be a weird place for this sort of thing? Is there another platform people like? Or do we need to set up a static site generator with a prebuilt blog theme?

radihuq · Accepted Answer

I look at a bunch of company dev blogs for my side project[0].
IMO don't use Medium as its tough for content exploration as a user.
I think the best option is to setup a static site generator using whatever tool works for you - ideally a tool that allows your users to search for blog posts, and filter posts by tags.
I would probably start with Wordpress to quickly get started, and explore other options as needs arise.
[0] https://www.engineeringblogs.io/

sofixa · Answer

Medium is pretty bad, but it's still used extensively, including by Google and Netflix. There's also dev.to and HackerNoon. SubStack seems like a weird choice IMHO.I'd setup a static site with something like Hugo , but if you don't want to waste too much time Medium or equivalents is perfectly fine.

codingdave · Answer

Wordpress is just about always the answer. Stick with the out-of-the box functions because plugins are where it goes weird in terms of quality, but if you just want to publish a blog, there is a reason it still is used on so many sites - it works.

bnchrch · Answer

Echoing what other people have said here and adding my own recommendation.
- Dont use Medium, they will paywall your users and you cant use your own domain
- Dont roll your own, it will waste time and marketing will get mad.
- Not sure about substack tbh so
My honest recommendation is to use Ghost, it has the highest quality themes and CMS (when compared to wordpress) and you can self host if you'd like or let someone else take care of the mess for a small fee.

slater · Answer

Substack seems increasingly overrun w/ right-wing and right-wing adjacent loonies. Medium seems perpetually stuck in "ok we need to make money; what if we remove 'actual good feature' and replace it with 'feature nobody wants, needs, or asked for'?" mode.Just spin up a Wordpress site and call it a day.