Some Medium Questions, Answered
On beta deficiencies, bundle economics, and blogging
Last week, I posted a call for questions. I got many! Thank you for writing. There’s no way I will keep up with answering them all, but here’s a start.
Many of them were about recent Medium updates, which is not surprising. I’ll batch some of those answers here. Next time, I’ll do some non-Medium questions.
‘A concerned Medium fanatic’ writes:
Why did anyone at Medium think removing basic navigation and the existing layout options for publications was a good idea in the Beta rollout?
Our new version of publications — which are now available to everyone (if you have a publication, look for “beta” in your pub settings)— have a bunch of new functionality. Most visibly, the ability to change the look of your publication — colors, fonts, etc. They also don’t have all the old functionality (specifically, more layout options and navigation). As the word “beta” implies, this new product is not done (not that software ever is done — unless it’s dead).
Some of the things we removed in order to simplify, but some we just haven’t gotten to yet. This is because, in addition to adding functionality, we actually rebuilt these pages on a new front-end stack.
The good news I can tell you is that we are bringing back the option to add navigation to the top of your pages — to both on-Medium and off-Medium pages. Look for that soon.
As for layout, we will eventually have some new things to consider there, as well. I think the single-column design is going to promote more reading, especially for frequent visitors. But if it’s not what you’re going for, feel free to not opt into the beta yet.
Anthony Lawrence writes:
Are you going to fix all the deficiencies and missing functionality of the mobile app(s) soon?
I don’t know if we will fix all the deficiencies, but, again, if you’re talking about the beta, the team is making it better every day. I love it, personally. If you haven’t tried it out yet, please do. You might see the beta option in your settings. (If it’s not there yet, it should be soon.)
One thing to know, though: As I wrote about here, this app is really oriented around following. If you follow lots of writers you like, it’s great. If you don’t (yet), there’s lots of opportunities…
