31 Comments

Good how-to summary, though likely beyond my tech abilities. What do you think of leaving short-form versions of articles on Medium as teasers and referrals to the long form Substack articles?

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Very interesting. Thank you.

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Great post thank you! Life of a modern day writer huh. Technology and platforms galore.

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PS. I did the move from Medium to here with the built in tool. Just download the zip from medium and upload it here. actually worked perfectly. Had to unpublish all of my comments though because it pushed those to substack as blog posts as well.

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first time i am coming across your work, thank you for the helpful tips on moving from medium. i am just starting to substack things, once i see some of my favorite newsletters move over i know its time to make the shift. hopefully the process wont be to painful. I also agree with Mitch in that our writings and content should live at its own address and the platforms we wish to connect it to should get some sort of “authorization” from us to release it to that platform. Making content geospacially aware ?? maybe possible in the future. with things like web3 and nfc tech, i am able to token gate and “know” things like if i open the door to my house the house already knows to turn lights on appropriately and do magical things. might be the case when you walk into your local coffee place and the place “knows” you are there and also releases any info you might want people in the same shop to know : “hey im a writer, i blog about xyz and here is the link to my latest article if it is something you might be interested in” .... ah the future

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Hi there, I tried to import from my wordpress blog, it says it finds only 10 articles, I hit import, but after that I don't see any XML file. I miss this part on your post. It failed for me as well as you wrote, but I can't do the following move.

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I ended up only taking some writing pieces from Medium, and then re-writing. It felt like what happens when I'm writing fiction and make the change from third to first person or vice versa: once I was making the change, the nature of the platform and what I wanted to achieve in my newsletter dictated the shift that needed to occur.

SO interesting to read about this move on your part! I remember stumbling over your work on Medium and thinking, "This is so good!"

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This is immensely helpful. Thank you for such a comprehensive write-up on the process. :D

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Thanks for sharing how you did this Sharon. It’s really insightful and demystifies what may have been seen as a daunting task. I enjoyed reading and learning from you. Thank you.

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Pivoting is a required skill for content creators. I like how you used WordPress as the intermediary. Your account of the journey gave me an idea--more accurately--a wistful glimpse to a future where our creations follow us as closely as our driver's licenses.

To get a picture of what I'm thinking you'll have to go to the past to look at the the attempt to create phone numbers and systems that would contact us no matter where we were (this was before mobile phones, obviously.) Call-forwarding was just the tip of the iceberg. Other services would have "smart" dialling, where you would be contacted at different numbers at different times of the day.

Imagine the freedom that would have entailed to a busy professional. No longer tied to the office phone, nor needing to pay for 3rd-party answering services, the professional could have what essentially became a mobile phone experience.

What if our content could be broadcast from our credit card-sized "cloud" server? We could be walking Wi-fi hotspots while also "jacking in" to the cellular networks so that our readers could find us anywhere.

We'd still be at the mercy of whoever own our credit card cloud server...but we're used to that! LOL

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