Reasons to Choose Hashnode over Medium, Dev.to and Blogger

I have been researching these few days where should I start my software development blog. Medium is pretty good but the paywall is a big NO! I had my first post there, then I have decided to move it over to Hashnode.

So these are my reasons:

• Sub-domain and custom own domain support. I can move to my own domain one day if I need to (although this is unlikely to happen)

• Google Analytics and Google Search Console integration support. Blogger can do this too.

• No paywall. I have been asking myself - would I pay to read? My answer is no. Yupe the paywall can be easily bypassed but not everyone knows this. 

• Blog looks professional and clean (similar to Medium). The rest do not seem so professional especially this one Blogger!

• Custom navigation tab at my blog using Article Series. Blogger can do this too but not the others.

• Email newsletter setup, Blogger can do this too.

• Software development blog centric similar to Dev.to

This is also Github backup feature. It seems useful but when do I need this? Is it when Hashnode decides to shut down one day? I hope this won't happen. Perhaps this is the only drawback among the other Blogging platforms here which are more mature? The risk is there.

So here you go, this is my blog - Android Development Articles. I only have one post there and hopefully it will grow big one day. :) 

Edit HTML Problem in New Blogger Interface

I just want to share a piece of information that I discovered about the root cause of the Edit HTML problem that I 'm facing in the new blogger interface. If you do not face this problem, you may skip this article.

Don't know since when, blogger has forced us to use the "New Blogger Interface". At first, it seems pretty cool after you get used to some of the new GUI features but one thing that border me is the "Edit HTML" function under the template. Whenever I go to the template and I have this infinite loading page problem!

 I only see this "blogger progress icon" in my entire page! It loads forever...

To workaround with this problem, I just simply switch back to the "Old Blogger Interface" as follow:

It appears solves the problem but wait! What if one day Google doesn't allow me to switch back to the "Old Blogger Interface". Then, I will forever stuck and will not able to access to my blog HTML directly anymore.

So, I must figure it out and it turns out that it was due to my following javascript in most of my blogs that caused the infinite loading problem in the new blogger interface:

<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
if (top.location != self.location) top.location.replace(self.location);
</script>

I think I added this code to prevent the "NetworkedBlog" to frame my blogs. So, what I did I just remove this code from my blog and everything gets solved! I get a nice template page below. It used to cannot load at all.

Apparently the "NetworkedBlogs" has a new feature to disable this frame. What you need to do is go to Syndication, choose Your Blog and select "Custom Post". Then, you just select the "Hide NetworkedBlogs Toolbar" to disable the frame. When the frame is disabled, you do not need the javascripot above anymore.

 P/S: Hope you have similar problems like mine and this post helps.