I’ve started copying some of my blog posts over to Medium. A lot of other WordPress users are considering doing the same, so I’m writing this to explain the differences as I see them.

This month I’ve switched from an iPhone to an Android phone.
In some ways it’s better and in other ways it’s worse.
It’s got features I never had on my iPhone.
I feel like a have greater control over it than I did with my iPhone.
But some aspects of the user experience aren’t as good.

For example, what idiot at Google decided that the device should loudly vibrate every time you press a key?

Sure, you can turn it off, but a great design gets the defaults just right for you so that you don’t need to spend the time configuring it in the first place.

WordPress is like Android.

Medium is like iOS.

Medium, and posts written using it, tend to look and feel better. There is less clutter and a cleaner feel. It is generally very smart about understanding what you want to achieve and making it happen for you almost magically. But there are also occasions where it feels a little simplistic.

WordPress, and posts written using it, are more customisable. You can edit the raw HTML and have complete control over your markup. You can create an entire site with it. But it involves more work than it does on Medium. On a mobile device, writing raw HTML is a very slow and tedious experience. It’s not fun. But it’s possible.

Try both of them

At first I tried copying and pasting the HTML into a medium post. The results were terrible. Then I found there’s an import story feature that makes it easy. You need to spend about a minute tweaking it before publishing, but then its all done.

I am getting new visitors who would probably have never come across my posts otherwise.

I’m also finding that the process is helping me to become a better writer. As I read over posts I wrote a year ago I found ways to say the same things in fewer words.

When it comes to either blogging platforms or mobile OS platforms, there is no “best”.
Each option has its own strengths, and different users will have different preferences.
Don’t be a brand snob, give each option a try.

For the Medium version of this, see here: Medium/ZombieCodeKill