Can we Investigate/Document the UX of publishing an article on Medium.com ?

[nelsonic]

Related to #96 could we take a look at the steps publishing a blog post on Medium.com ? Would you be able to collect screenshots for the UX and/or do a screencast ? specifically:

• [x] how many steps does it take to sign-up and post your first article?
• [x] what is the authoring process/experience like?
• [x] Can I update a post after it's been created and is there a revision history?
• [ ] can I import data from an existing blog/platform ?
• [ ] can I export the posts I create on Medium?

@sohilpandya we briefly discussed this yesterday, it would be really great if we could systematically answer the questions above. I would consider using Medium (temporarily at least) for DWYL's "Blog" with a view to understanding it's core features ...

I still think building a modular Open Source CMS with core real-time interaction and full-text search will be really useful to many of the organisations/customers we work with, but openly acknowledge that we are too thinly spread and need to focus on our revenue-generating product in the short-term. Meanwhile we still need to start publishing "Blog" Posts ASAP... so this would be a really useful bit of research to undertake.

[sohilpandya]

Thanks for the above @nelsonic,

I've been thinking about what the best way to go about doing all the above would be and here is what I'm thinking:

• Create an account for DWYL (either personal/organisation account if there is such an account)
• The First blog will be me trying to go through steps 1, 2 & 3(potentially 4 & 5). This will be a screencast and a blog post on Medium

It would in my opinion be a good first blog post, i.e. talking about what we are trying to do in terms of exploring options for the best blogging platform for DWYL. (Titled: Medium, is it the best blogging platform?) I know it sounds a little clickbaity. 😬

But I would love to hear your thoughts, as I was thinking of making a start on it quite soon if you are happy with the idea.

[sohilpandya]

How many steps does it take to sign-up and post your first article?

I've taken a screencast of me going through the process of signing up and creating a blog for the very first time. Unfortunately 😞 the file size is around 400mb so won't be able to post it here, But I'll show it to you tomorrow! 👍

But here is the process for that one has to follow:

Sign up

1. Sign Up	2. Verify via Email

3. Personal Details	4. Topics of Interest

5. Follow People	6. Sign up Complete

Publish your First Blog

1. Select "Write a Story"	2. Write Content and Publish

Note

• User can only add 5 tags when creating a story

• User can change the visibility of the article from public to unlisted (where only the users that have a link can access the article)

  

• User can change the License for the blog post

  

[sohilpandya]

Updating of Posts and viewing revision history is possible. Medium have documented it reasonably well in this article

But here is the process from scratch:

1. Edit Post	2. View Revision History

3.View specific revision	4. Restore Revision

I have to be honest, it took me a while to figure out how to view the revision history, it wasn't clear where one would be able to access this from. (had to google how to do it 😟)