Introduction
One of the most asked questions in my DMs is to where put the technical articles. There is various platform for general articles and more specifically only for technical articles.
Today I am going to list down some of the best platforms to write technical articles. The list is in the best to not-so-best order. This is from my perspective.
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So, let’s get started.
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Now, let's back to the topic.
Dev.to
A constructive and inclusive social network for software developers. With you every step of your journey.
The best platform I have used for writing technical articles. From my initial days, I am on the platform. The best part is that your first article can give you tons of reach when you don’t have any followers. It doesn’t matter the number of followers, the content matter on dev.to the platform.
There are lots of improvements on the platform. The UI makes that most of the articles are getting discovered.
Hashnode
Start a blog for free instantly and share your ideas with people in tech, developers, and engineers. Hashnode is a free blogging platform.
The second platform that comes to my mind for writing technical articles is Hashnode. They have a pretty good-looking UI. You can connect your domain or use their sub-domain for writing articles. The UI and SSL are provided by the Hashnode. With your own domain, you can have more control over the UI and feel of the blog platform.
The thing is that it little bit hard to get reach on the platform as a beginner. Your article has to be exceptionally great to be featured on the top of the blog and lead to more reach. The UI looks good but pinning featured posted at the top hampered the reach of other articles. That’s what I think of having a low reach for beginner developers.
In spite of such things, You can give it a try for writing articles.
Medium
Medium is an open platform where readers find dynamic thinking, and where expert and undiscovered voices can share their writing on any topic.
Medium is the place for putting general articles. You can put your technical articles on it. It is very easy to write and publish articles on the platform.
I have given it a try in my initial days but couldn’t continue on it. But I have seen some awesome growth on Medium for technical articles. So, I would recommend you explore the platform.
Tealfeed
Tealfeed is a knowledge-sharing platform that keeps users feed informative, connects people of similar interests, and empowers creators.
Tealfeed is a new platform that serves as a general blogging platform. I have been in contact with their CEO regarding the future of the tealfeed and its looks awesome.
I also publish my articles on this platform. You can get some good reach through their platform and google source.
Your Own Platform
The best platform you can put your blog.
The best place to put your articles is on your own platform. This means that you can put your articles on your own website. This will make your article’s platform independent. You will have more control over most things.
The trick in publishing articles on your platform is that you put an article on your website and with the canonical URL publish articles on other platforms such as dev.to, hashnode, medium, and other blogging platforms. Canonical URL will tell the search engine about the main articles and platform articles are marked as duplicates of the main articles. This will not hamper your site’s SEO. You will gain reach on the blogging platform and you will also get views on your own website through search engines.
So, Create a website using WordPress or on your own. Start publishing on it and with canonical URL publish on other platforms.
This is how I publish my articles.
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Conclusion
I hope, you have understand the platform and methods to use while putting an article online. Use your website with other blogging platforms for publishing your article.
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Top comments (61)
IMHO, the best platform you can use as a beginner is Medium. It has a very fantastic feature which is publications. Some publications you can join easily like Illumination push your reach significantly.
Unfortunately for Dev.to and Hashnode, it is pretty hard to be noticed even though your article has high value. It is like your article gets lost in the storm.
I was a fan of Medium until they erected the pay wall. I avoid it like the plague now.
A few months ago they laid off I think it was 20% of their staff.
I understand that Medium is a business and wants to be profitable but pay walls where there are other competing content management/blogs/etc. That don't have an annoying barrier to content....
Remove cookies :-)
Great alternative is FreeCodeCamp but you need to get accepted. Check How to Write for freeCodeCamp News.
I don't how they accept/reject technical writers. I applied for the program in February but didn't get any message from their side.
That's interesting, I've applied and got acceppted. Maybe you should try again.
Yep, I will again fill the form.
Definitely a goodreason to drop Medium.
But ... but ... but ... the paywall, it's absolutely off-putting.
I can agree on getting low reach on Hashnode but dev.to is superior than Hashnode in term of getting reach.
I haven't used medium that much but from your view looks interesting.
Dev.to is still okay about reach. I wrote my first article and I had 20. I guess that's okay for a newbie writer
My second post How I Solved Heroku H10 / 503 Error - A Story had 40 in a week. I'm so happy. 😍😍
It's good that you are improving😀
Thank you very much. I'm inspired by the likes of you
Thanks for your kind words 🙏
Or: All of the above...
Pretty much all of them support canonical links. I just publish on one and then repost on the others with canonical pointing back. That way people can see my posts where they are.
I use hashnode as my main option since I can use my own domain. That's crucial to me. I then repost on dev.to, medium, hackernoon, dzone and fojay.io.
One big advantage in medium is publications. By submitting to a publication you can expand your reach significantly e.g. better programming, etc.
Yep that's my last point and my way of posting articles online. You should have a blog which is platform independent.
It’s true that we prioritize making DEV an inclusive space for all developers, regardless of gender identity or presentation. Hateful comments about transgender people and their choices (or those of any other marginalized group) will be flagged as hateful, and users making them will be suspended from the platform. If this is a problem for you, you are welcome to host your technical articles elsewhere.
From my experience its been fairly easy to go semi-viral on Dev, but its hard to get retain readers despite having a follow feature. It's also difficult to earn substantial revenue.
Medium has never been great for programming articles. They lack basic features such as syntax highlighting is annoying. The best workaround is to embed GitHub Gists but that is a tedious process. Medium used to have decent revenue, but they recently added minimum requirements to get approved and expect they will continue to change the barrier to entry Like YouTube has.
Will be checking out some of these other platforms for sure, and will leave my review.
Explore the platform make a choice. Platform sharing revenue is not possible on dev.to and Hashnode. But you can get external client and eventually you can earn
And they'd be right to flag that. Your political views are not welcome on DEV either.
You give good insights on where to post the articles.
The mistake I made when I started is to think it was required to have actual articles ready for publication before doing anything.
Not at all!
The key is to understand that Content is king. The distribution platform is just a tool. A tool for what?
Start with content. Start with writing a lot of shitty first drafts in Notion or * Obsidian The rest will sort itself out once you have enough content.
That's also great. It's all about exploring what's best for you.
Agreed with selection of sites. I've tried all of them over the last 2 years. The one I wouldn't recommend for technical writing is Medium.
There are several things not good with Medium and I've came across a post like a year and a half outlining all the disadvantages of using it for technical writing.
Starting out, DEV is hands down the best place to post content while getting the hang of it.
Yep, I totally agree with you. I only once posted on Medium but did not work out for me. DEV.to is quite the best for technical writing.
Funny how I only posted there once and then was like "nehh no more" and then found about DEV 😄
Yeah same for me
I think the answer to this really depends on your goals with your writing.
If you're tryin to build an audience, then that plays into some of the comments shared on this thread. Me personally? I don't care about traffic, it's icing on the cake. I write for the benefit of the community, but 99% of you aren't my true target audience with publishing posts.
So who am I writing for? My future business relationships. I like being able to provide reference material as a follow up to interviews for jobs or contracts. That way, I don't have to get into the weeds during a discussion but still provide details to validate my reputation.
Aside from posting here, I also use Gitbook to serve true technical documents (also to demonstrate I know how to implement a public docs portal)
It is one the best way of starting a blog while learning. As you can share your learning and views with the other people.
For blogging, I would recommend you using open source CMS for publishing article on your own domain/website. WIth canonical URL post on other platform.
I was a fan of Medium, but until they kept pushing their democratic/liberal articles constantly during the Trump vs Clinton time. I could careless who you want to side, but they lost me when they kept shoving it in my emails constantly.
Agreed.
👍
I love dev.to and dislike Medium due to their paywalls BUT have found some articles really really interesting. I use 12ft.io/ to get around the paywall and works lovely.
You could just use an Incognito/Private Window to browse the paywalled content.
Dev.to is the best for technical writing and nice way of bypassing the paywall articles.
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You can try Ghost
Medium it's very barebones, only text basic formatting like bold, italic. No way to format source code with usual monospaced font