I was explaining to Lyssa that your migration to Substack is momentous with your role as a trend setter for the indieweb folks, reflected in the comments. But it almost feels as though the world of indieweb has long past, with few remembering e.g. Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere (POS…
I was explaining to Lyssa that your migration to Substack is momentous with your role as a trend setter for the indieweb folks, reflected in the comments. But it almost feels as though the world of indieweb has long past, with few remembering e.g. Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere (POSSE) https://indieweb.org/POSSE
I found myself forgetting too. My writing is now scattered across Substack and Medium instead of properly syndicated from my own website. The threat of being de-platformed (or even worse, becoming *undiscoverable*) meant a strong desire to get people onto mailing lists. Which meant promising "exclusive" content, which meant not syndicating...
But perhaps that is a trap I had willingly set myself into? There's technically nothing that prevents me from posting most Substack content onto my own website, barring those I wish to remain paywalled. Since RSS continues to lose to email inboxes still, the "benefit" of subscribing to a Substack can be email notification itself, rather than exclusivity.
The ideal imagery I have in mind is Japanese wood block-print--own the original and the wood block, make lots of reproductions everywhere. Without this ancient technology taking off at the time, the Great Wave off Kanagawa may not be as well-known.
Substack is outside the indieweb ethos, but I feel it's accomplishing POSSE in a way. You can publish all your work in a single place (custom domain, canonical URLs, categories, etc.), and then it auto-replicates in 3-4 other places (to the Substack reader, email inboxes, Twitter, and an RSS feed).
I almost considered hosting my essays on Substack and my logs on Ghost, but it adds complexity when work is scattered (both for writers and readers). I'm going to try to push the limits here to see what it's like to build out a full site (ie: I'll have log pages per month -- they won't be posts, but standalone pages with URLs, all hyperlinked from a 'log archive' page.)
Do you see any downsides to hosting all your work on Substack (essays, newsletters, notes, course info, etc.)?
In the past, all content had to work within a single structure: posts. Now, you have 4 ways to divide content. In addition to posts (1), you can put posts in categories (2). If you want to separate something from posts, you can make pages -- which can either be in the nav bar (3), or, standalone URLs (4).
🤔 does substack allow one to easily export everything? Not that what I’m doing right now is that “easy” (technically one can export with Notion but it’s not as clean as say a bunch of markdown files) but to me the indie part is being able to walk away with the data and replicate the setup elsewhere.
Good Q. I just tried their bulk export function at the bottom of settings. It gives you a CSV or your subscribers, a CSV of all your posts (date, title, subtitle, topic), and then a folder where each post is an HTML file.
Substack uses Stripe. The combination of both is pure brilliance. You are not locked in to Substack. You can take your Stripe to your own website if you so chose. What's there not to love about that!
Back again after mulling for a while :)
I was explaining to Lyssa that your migration to Substack is momentous with your role as a trend setter for the indieweb folks, reflected in the comments. But it almost feels as though the world of indieweb has long past, with few remembering e.g. Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere (POSSE) https://indieweb.org/POSSE
I found myself forgetting too. My writing is now scattered across Substack and Medium instead of properly syndicated from my own website. The threat of being de-platformed (or even worse, becoming *undiscoverable*) meant a strong desire to get people onto mailing lists. Which meant promising "exclusive" content, which meant not syndicating...
But perhaps that is a trap I had willingly set myself into? There's technically nothing that prevents me from posting most Substack content onto my own website, barring those I wish to remain paywalled. Since RSS continues to lose to email inboxes still, the "benefit" of subscribing to a Substack can be email notification itself, rather than exclusivity.
The ideal imagery I have in mind is Japanese wood block-print--own the original and the wood block, make lots of reproductions everywhere. Without this ancient technology taking off at the time, the Great Wave off Kanagawa may not be as well-known.
Thanks for sharing Christin.
Substack is outside the indieweb ethos, but I feel it's accomplishing POSSE in a way. You can publish all your work in a single place (custom domain, canonical URLs, categories, etc.), and then it auto-replicates in 3-4 other places (to the Substack reader, email inboxes, Twitter, and an RSS feed).
I almost considered hosting my essays on Substack and my logs on Ghost, but it adds complexity when work is scattered (both for writers and readers). I'm going to try to push the limits here to see what it's like to build out a full site (ie: I'll have log pages per month -- they won't be posts, but standalone pages with URLs, all hyperlinked from a 'log archive' page.)
Do you see any downsides to hosting all your work on Substack (essays, newsletters, notes, course info, etc.)?
In the past, all content had to work within a single structure: posts. Now, you have 4 ways to divide content. In addition to posts (1), you can put posts in categories (2). If you want to separate something from posts, you can make pages -- which can either be in the nav bar (3), or, standalone URLs (4).
🤔 does substack allow one to easily export everything? Not that what I’m doing right now is that “easy” (technically one can export with Notion but it’s not as clean as say a bunch of markdown files) but to me the indie part is being able to walk away with the data and replicate the setup elsewhere.
Good Q. I just tried their bulk export function at the bottom of settings. It gives you a CSV or your subscribers, a CSV of all your posts (date, title, subtitle, topic), and then a folder where each post is an HTML file.
Oh! Thank you for digging this up and saving me some legwork 🦵 Hrmm!! I shall consider following your path..
I suppose the other “worry” is that if substack changes their paywall stance 🤔 but that’s the price we pay as consumers I suppose!
Substack uses Stripe. The combination of both is pure brilliance. You are not locked in to Substack. You can take your Stripe to your own website if you so chose. What's there not to love about that!