For Writers only! A Medium-based Solution to the Website Problem.
It’s common advice for writers with some level of ambition to have their own personal website. And that can be rather annoying! Making simple, personal websites is not very interesting and can easily get tedious due to the sheer amount of choices involved — green button? red button? Text here? Text there? And so on and so on. And before you know it, the afternoon is gone.
At the same time there are two genuinely good reasons for getting it done. For one, on a platform like Medium everyone, including you and me, is just one among a million writers (literally that is). Readers think “I’ve read this interesting piece on Medium” instead of “I’ve read this interesting piece by [your name]” — Not very good for the writer’s ego.
Moreover, as Youtuber Jenna Moreci points out, a somewhat serious writer, who doesn’t have his or her own web-presence arouses a sort of suspicion. It’s kind of like a real estate agent without an office. The office strictly speaking isn’t necessary for the agent to do a good job, but everybody expects it, so it’s a little weird if there is none. Same goes for somewhat serious writers and their personal websites. Yet many keep putting it off, because it’s just a little too tedious. So, being a writer as well as a programmer, I came up with a solution:
I wrote an application that can take any writer’s Medium profile, get the information on it, plug it into a website layout with a handful of dynamic features and put it online. Very simple. I did it for myself and here it is:
As you can see, it’s relatively simple. But that is so on purpose — avoiding unnecessary distractions and focusing on just the essentials. There are only a few select elements: An Image, a self-description, an email subscription field, links to social media, a header with a contact- and an about-page, and of course a list of my posts in the very centre. All the essentials done simply, nothing more. In my personal Dashboard I can change each of these elements to my linking, like my self-description for instance.
Because this site is auto-generated based on my Medium profile, the same can be done for anyone on Medium, including you, if you like. The only thing required is a Name and Email address. So, if you’d also like to get your own dedicated Website in the least painful way, you can do so here: Get-Website-based-on-your-Medium. Go through the very simple “Start-Trial” process and you’re done. Time required: roughly 30 seconds. And that’s your Website problem solved.
Using Wordgates (name of the application) is free for the first 4 weeks and afterwards, if you still like us and decide to stay, we charge $3.99 per month. Again, plain and simple. The free trial ends automatically if you don’t prolong it, which means you don’t have to worry about cancelling anything on time.
If you try Wordgates, your page will take a maximum of 24 hours to be online and afterwards will sync with your Medium account daily. Of course you can also add posts to your site which are not on Medium. It is after all a standalone page in it’s own right.
Obviously I am distinctly biased, but I can honestly recommend this. It’s the single easiest and quickest way to get rid of that guilt of not having made that pesky personal website already, and to gain the actual benefits of having one.
When your page online, as mentioned before, you can use your Dashboard to control your features. You can change your Image and self-description, remove any feature you don’t want, add new posts that aren’t on your Medium, add new sub-pages and change their content. That’s it. No choice overload here. Writers should write, not web-design! That’s the entire point here— to solve the essential Website problem in the simplest way possible and get out of your way. So, if you’re interested, here is the relevant link to Wordgates once more:
Wordgates — Medium-based Website-builder for Writers!
Enjoy and please get in touch if you have any questions!
All the Best,
Johannes
You can also find me on Twitter | Or message me at: joseikowsky@gmail.com
