Custom domains are back!. Your domain name is an important part
Your thoughts folks?
From a “digital sharecropping” point of view, it’s marginally better than not having a custom domain. At least you own the target, and you can grab it and re-point it if necessary.
My opinion would be swayed more by whether or not all references to your content would go to your custom domain, whether you can export your content, clean your content off of Medium, etc.
Mainly I wouldn’t want to lose a Medium account and then (a) have no way to recover my content, and (b) be competing for Google attention with my own content on Medium. That’s a losing battle. 
Strange company. Similarly to Ev’s other company, Twitter, it’s baffling how so many employees it takes to make changes to problems preventing growth (SSL and domain onboarding, in this case.)
I am interested in this as well and will be keenly monitoring the responses here.
Just small comment here, you need to pay for Medium subscription to get Custom Domains.
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Thank you, I didn’t notice that.
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Why would I trust that they wouldn’t take it away again?
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@RDK am using Ghost, hosted on Digitalocean. However, since I do not have the know how to mange it myself, I struggle at times. So I am seeking a solution where all I have to do is write and publish.
What theme are you using? and I gather with wordpress.org, you are hosting it yourself?
@MitchWagner I agree. Trust is earned. However, this time around the custom domain feature is for paying members only so I gather, its here to stay. In some ways, it ticks all my boxes. However, in other ways, I simply do not trust them and I am certain, ultimately, they have control over my content.
I’m hosting on DreamHost. Don’t remember where I read about it first time. Their web site is accessible so I signed up right away.
Yeah for me it was a few things to learn about manage web site etc. I spent maybe few days first to explore admin panel and various features before I was comfortable to write/publish something. When I started I used the default Wordpress 2020 theme or something. Recently I updated to latest version of Wordpress and maybe theme has changed too. I guess I need to ask again my friends how my site looks like. I did it when I started, but already forgot the visual stuff haha.
I also thought about switch to platform which don’t needs much maintenance and adjustments. At the same time I didn’t found any solid alternatives and at this point I feel comfortable with management part of site. I keep list of feature ideas in drafts if something interesting comes to mind. What was impressive for me, after I created site on wordpress, site was accessible out of the box. So now when I visit site with poor accessibility I start to wonder why you just don’t use Wordpress instead. Nightmare for me is when web sites don’t have headings in their body. It’s understandable if it’s a short post, but makes difficult to jump thru sections in longer articles.
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From an accessibility perspective, how is my website?
Wordpress.com plans are affordable so I am considering solving my problem with paying a little bit more. Ghost has a Pro plan but its too expensive for my needs. How much you paying Dreamhost. DigitalOcean is USD72 a year (this includes backups)
I was redirected to wordpress.com, but I found your site quickly in NetNewsWire 
All is fine so long. Will keep you updated if I discover any issues.
I pay the cheapest one around 40$/year.
Why you pay both for digital ocean and Ghost?
I can’t speak for @MereCivilian, but I’m also running Ghost on a DigitalOcean droplet.
You only have to pay for Ghost if you’re paying for one of their Pro plans, which start at $29 per month. Those plans include managed hosting.
The Ghost software itself is free and open source, so you can install it yourself. A $5/month DigitalOcean droplet is up to the task. In that scenario, you’re only paying for DigitalOcean.
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Hm, 30$/month. Imagine podcast ad for them, “Their plans starts just at 29.99$”. I would either go with squarespace instead I guess.
Any specific reason why you chose Ghost instead for wordpress, squarespace or others? @MereCivilian and @acavender
Right!? Never seen a company quite so unable to figure out what it is or wants to be.
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@RDK I only pay for DigitalOcean. Ghost is free if you are hosting it yourself. That USD72 is for DigitalOcean
Why Ghost: When I was looking, Ghost was widely recommended and worked very well with Ulysses. I have no real problems with Ghost. I just struggle to maintain it and I am always scared that I will do something and Ghost will die. Its more about the peace of mind rather than a real problem with Ghost.
That is why, I rather pay a little more to Wordpress.com and let them manage and host my website and all I have to do is write and publish. Medium (with custom domain) also does this now. But, as I said earlier, I do not trust it. In saying that, if they do change, it appears existing using are not affected. That’s what happened last time.
http://500ish.com/ has always been hosted on Medium.
Yahoo is a prime example of that. Just look at the numerous videos about Yahoo’s downfall on YouTube. Most of them point out the fact that Yahoo had very little direction going into the late 2000s and beyond. Even before that time, they were sort of still a directionless company (especially one that made a ton of utterly stupid decisions). I’m shocked that they still exist nowadays. They’re certainly in an eternal downfall at the moment.
Did I also forget to say that they had multiple opportunities to acquire Google? I’m not even going to get into that. Search it up online…
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Squarespace starts at $12/month — more than double what I pay for DigitalOcean.
I’ve used WordPress in the past (self-hosted), managing both single-site and multi-site installations. If you need or want a full-on business website, WordPress might be a better option.
But WordPress is a bother to maintain, especially if you’re using plugins for some of the functionality you need. Of course, it can do more than Ghost does.
But all I really want or need is a place to write, and Ghost (I’m new to it) looks like it’s going to be simpler to maintain.
For my use case, it really comes down to this: WordPress is a very nice Swiss Army knife that can do just about anything — but all I really need or want is a screwdriver.
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I compared Squarespace to paid Ghost plan
What is your blog btw?
There’s nothing but a few test posts there yet, but it’ll be at amycavender.com. Older stuff is at amycavender.org.
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