The best sites to view Medium articles?
Medium is one of the leading online publishing platforms, known for aggregating articles on various genres and topics. From personal stories that allow one to glance at an individual’s experience to critical analyses that cover current issues with well-researched opinions. Medium caters to a wide spectrum of interests and reading preferences.
Why Medium Platform is popular
The platform features expert views from industry leaders, academics, and thought leaders that go a long way in teaching readers more about contemporary issues and emerging trends. Apart from expert opinions, Medium also features creative works, including essays, poetry, and fiction, further enriching the platform with imagination and art. The ever-growing repository of content is a key strength of Medium. The new articles published on the platform allow readers to explore fresh content all the time. The dynamic flow of works means there’s always something new to find on Medium, and the site can therefore be a valuable resource for keeping up to date on any number of topics and participating in ongoing discussions.
Sites that feature Medium articles
Medium
It’s a digital platform where people read various articles. Its friendly interface enables one to navigate through the content with much ease and find out different articles. Its design has easy navigation, recommendations of personalized content, and an efficient search function that enhances the user experience on Medium. The platform allows features such as comments, highlighting, and claps (similar to likes) that enrich the interaction of a reader with the content.
Features:
- Personalized Feed: The homepage displays a feed of articles tailored to your interests based on your reading history and interactions.
- Topic and Tag Browsing: Explore articles by selecting from various topics and tags, allowing you to dive deep into subjects you care about.
- Follow Writers and Publications: Stay updated with content from specific authors or publications by following them.
- Reading List: Save articles to your reading list to revisit them later.
- Medium Membership: Subscribe to Medium’s membership to access exclusive, member-only content and enjoy an ad-free experience.
Pros and Cons:
| Pros | Cons |
| Comprehensive Content | Paywall for Premium Content |
| Access to a wide range of articles, both free and premium. | Some articles require a paid membership to access. |
| Intuitive Navigation | Distraction Potential |
| Easily find articles via tags, topics, and personalized recommendations. | The abundance of content can be overwhelming. |
| Community Interaction | |
| Engage with articles through comments, likes, and highlights. |
Medium Mobile App
The Medium mobile application allows for an easy and quick read of articles on the mobile. It integrates well with your Medium account, ensuring continuity in any activity, such as saving articles, giving claps, or highlighting, across all devices. Whether on your smartphone, tablet, or computer, your reading preferences, history, and recommendations are updated in real-time so you can always pick up where you left off. It has features for offline reading, push notifications for newer content, and tailored recommendations personalized to your interests.
Features:
- Offline Access: Save articles for offline reading, perfect for commuting or traveling.
- Push Notifications: Receive alerts about new posts from followed writers or publications, ensuring you don’t miss out on important updates.
- Personalized Recommendations: The app uses your reading history to suggest new articles tailored to your interests.
- Customizable Reading Experience: Adjust text size and background color for a comfortable reading experience.
Pros and Cons:
| Pros | Cons |
| Convenient Access | Potential for App Issues |
| Read articles anytime, anywhere, with offline reading capabilities. | Occasional bugs or lag may occur, especially after updates. |
| Real-Time Updates | Limited Features |
| Stay informed with push notifications about new content. | Some advanced website features may be less accessible on the app. |
| Personalization | |
| Receive content recommendations based on your reading preferences. |
RSS Feeds
RSS feeds are a great way to organize the content on Medium. While there are no official RSS feeds for Medium, there are many third-party tools that can create feeds for individuals, topics, or publications. These feeds will enable users to track and easily read the latest content in one location for ease of use to keep up-to-date without necessarily visiting the site itself.
Examples of Tools:
- Feedly: A popular RSS feed reader that allows users to create feeds, based on the URL, to follow Medium authors or publications.
- Inoreader: It is another powerful tool to manage RSS feeds by allowing their customization and filtering of content for personalized reading.
Features:
- Content Aggregation: Collect articles from multiple Medium sources in a single feed.
- Customizable Feeds: Filter and organize content based on your interests, tags, or sources.
- Efficient Scanning: Quickly scan headlines and summaries to find articles of interest.
Pros and Cons:
| Pros | Cons |
| Centralized Reading | Manual Setup |
| Manage multiple sources and publications from one place. | Requires setting up and maintaining RSS feeds manually. |
| Customizable | Limited Interactivity |
| Tailor your feed to display only the content that interests you. | Less integrated with Medium’s community features like commenting. |
| Efficiency | |
| Save time by aggregating content and quickly scanning through headlines. |
Twitter
Twitter is a perfect platform for sharing Medium articles. Writers are free to share links of their work with engaging captions, make use of the appropriate hashtags to reach target audiences, and tag other users or publications for increased visibility. It has a feature to retweet that makes the articles go viral. Its brief format allows posting frequently without clogging followers’ feeds. Also, the feedback and discussion through the real-time activity on Twitter make it a perfect networking tool to build one’s following.
Features:
- Real-Time Updates: Stay updated with real-time posts from following writers and publications.
- Content Discovery: Find articles through shares, likes, and comments from your social network.
- Engagement: Interact with content through likes, shares, and comments, and participate in discussions.
Pros and Cons:
| Pros | Cons |
| Real-time engagement | Character Limit |
| Ideal for instant communication and quick sharing of content. | The 280-character limit restricts the amount of information shared in a single post. |
| Hashtags | Short content lifespan |
| Allow users to categorize content, making it discoverable by a wider audience. | Tweets have a very short shelf life and can get lost in the constant stream of updates. |
| Viral potential | Lower click-through rates |
| Retweets and likes can lead to exponential exposure if content resonates with users. | Users often scroll quickly, leading to less interaction with shared links compared to other platforms. |
| Direct interaction | |
| Writers can easily interact with followers, influencers, or publications. |
The wide reach of Facebook makes it an ideal platform for content sharing. From personal profiles to dedicated pages or topic-oriented groups where readers and writers get together, share articles, and discuss various topics of the same interests. The post format on Facebook allows for longer comments accompanying the link to the article. It is a good way to initiate some conversations in the comments section. Since the algorithm prefers engagement on the content, articles that have a high number of likes, shares, and comments have higher visibility compared to others. Engagement can be increased further by running targeted ads on Facebook in order to reach certain demographics.
Features:
- Content Discovery: Find articles through shares, likes, and comments from your social network.
- Engagement: Interact with content through likes, shares, and comments, and participate in discussions.
- Real-Time Updates: Stay updated with real-time posts from following writers and publications.
Pros and Cons:
| Pros | Cons |
| Diverse audience | Declining organic reach: |
| With its large user base, it allows for broad reach across different demographics. | Facebook’s algorithm tends to prioritize paid promotions, limiting organic visibility for many posts. |
| Detailed Posts | Too much content |
| Allows more detailed posts with article links, which can spark longer discussions. | Content can easily get buried in users’ feeds due to the volume of shared information. |
| Groups | Audience targeting complexity |
| Targeted groups based on interests can help niche content find relevant audiences. | While you can reach a broad audience, it’s more challenging to ensure you’re reaching the most relevant users without paid ads. |
| Engagement algorithms | |
| More interaction (likes, shares, comments) boosts content visibility. |
It works best for professional development articles, industry insights, and business trends. Writers on Medium who publish any thought leadership pieces or career advice could easily share such in their professional network on LinkedIn. The focus of the platform on professional connections enables highly relevant targeting, and articles can give way to meaningful discussions in the comments. Sharing on LinkedIn helps build an author’s authority over the subjects they usually talk about and opens them up for networking with other professionals and future collaborators.
Features:
- Content Discovery: Find articles through shares, likes, and comments from your social network.
- Real-Time Updates: Stay updated with real-time posts from followed writers and publications.
- Engagement: Interact with content through likes, shares, and comments, and participate in discussions.
Pros and Cons:
| Pros | Cons |
| Professional audience | Lower engagement for non-professional content |
| Ideal for business-related content, career advice, and industry insights. | Lifestyle, entertainment, or personal interest articles tend not to perform as well. |
| High engagement for niche content | Less casual interaction: T |
| Thought leadership and professional pieces tend to perform well. | The professional tone limits the range of content that resonates well with users. |
| Stronger networking potential | Narrower focus: |
| More meaningful interactions with professionals in relevant industries. | Limited mainly to professional, career-focused, or industry-related content, which may not be suitable for all topics. |
| Authority Building | |
| Publishing articles or posts can establish you as a thought leader in your niche. |
Content Aggregators
Content aggregators are tools or services that crawl, organize, and present content coming from different sources in a single location. To users interested in managing and discovering articles, content aggregators introduce convenience by performing several key functions. They let the user categorize and organize the aggregated content into folders or tags for easier to find particular articles. Users follow the publication of contents that interest them and are updated when something new is published.These tools allow users to save articles for later reading, enabling them to revisit and review the content at their convenience without having to remember or track down individual links. Many aggregators also have recommendations or discovery features where the service recommends content for the user to read, usually based on users’ behavior and preferences.
Examples:
- Pocket: Users can save articles, videos, and other content from the web to Pocket and access them from any device. It also provides features to tag and organize the saved content and personalized recommendations.
- Flipboard: Users can create their own magazines or feeds by aggregating content from a host of sources, such as Medium. Flipboard delivers articles based on user interests and enables visually compelling presentation of content.
Features:
- Save and Organize: Save articles from Medium and other sources to read later and organize them into custom collections.
- Personalized Recommendations: Get suggestions for new articles based on your interests and saved content.
- Cross-Device Syncing: Access your saved articles from any device, ensuring you can read them wherever you are.
Pros and Cons:
| Pros | Cons |
| Curated Content | Additional Tool |
| Build a personalized library of articles from Medium and other sources. | Requires managing another app or service for content aggregation. |
| Ease of Use | Integration Limitations |
| Simple tools for saving and organizing articles. | Integration with Medium might not be as seamless as native tools. |
| Discovery | |
| Find new content based on your interests and reading habits. |
Email Newsletters
Most of the authors and publications on Medium have newsletters that deliver their latest works and updates directly into your inbox. Readers subscribe to such newsletters, which will keep them updated on new writings from their favorite authors. Newsletters guarantee that new articles and updates come to readers’ email,which means they don’t have to visit Medium for it.
Features:
- Direct Delivery: Receive articles directly in your email, eliminating the need to visit Medium’s site.
- Regular Updates: Get consistent updates from writers or publications you follow.
- Customizable: Choose newsletters based on your interests and preferred frequency.
Pros and Cons:
| Pros | Cons |
| Timely Updates: | Irrelevant Content |
| Keep up-to-date with new content without the need to actively check Medium, as newsletters bring fresh articles directly to your inbox. | If the newsletter isn’t well tailored, you might receive articles that are less relevant to your interests, reducing the effectiveness of the updates. |
| Convenience | Email Overload |
| Read and engage with content directly from your email, making it easy to access articles on-the-go or during short breaks. | Frequent newsletters can contribute to a cluttered inbox, which may be overwhelming if not managed properly. |
| Discover new content | Subscription Management |
| Discover new writers and publications through curated newsletters, which can introduce you to content you might not have found otherwise. | Keeping track of multiple subscriptions and managing preferences can become cumbersome if you follow numerous newsletters. |
Access Medium articles for free
Often readers want to know if they can access the medium article for free. If yes, what are their options? Medium works on a subscription basis; it may provide free of cost access to some content, but for full access, a subscription is required. Here are possible ways you can read more articles without necessarily subscribing:
Free Reads
Every month, Medium allows some number of free reads (usually 3 articles per month). You use them to view paid articles without having to subscribe. You can also create a free account that provides you access to some free articles.
Incognito Mode
Some people try using incognito or private browsers to bypass the limit to read free Medium articles. Medium tracks the limit of the free articles through cookies, which is prevented in incognito mode. This method will work sometimes but not each time.
Subscribe to Newsletters
Most authors on Medium have their newsletters to summarize, link, or give out their articles. These can be one of the good ways to get content without having to go through or log in via the paywall on the site itself.
Follow social media handles
Many writers will publish the entire content of it on Twitter, LinkedIn, or even Facebook.
Friends Links
Writers on the Medium can forward you “friend links,” where access to paid articles is granted for free.
File Format of the Medium Blog
Let’s now find out how Medium stores the articles and in which format these articles are displayed. The articles on Medium are stored and represented in structured content formats, usually a combination of Markdown, JSON, and HTML.
Writing and Storage Format:
Usually, authors write articles on Medium, and it stores the text in some simple format, such as Markdown or rich text, in the database at the backend. Medium stores metadata for the articles, which are tags, titles, and authors in JSON, making it easier to access.
Display Format:
Once articles have been published and opened in a web browser, Medium converts stored content to HTML format to display the content. The platform optimizes the articles for readability on multiple devices by using responsive HTML and CSS.
Conclusion:
Medium is an extremely popular site where readers get various informative articles of different types and genres by industry thought leaders and creative writers. Reading through Medium articles can be quite a personalized and engaging experience. Whether you are browsing directly via the official website of Medium, using their mobile app, organizing your content through RSS feeds, or using social media platforms, you can access the Medium articles from your preferred platform. Each one of the platforms has its own features, benefits, and limitations. You can get the most out of your reading experience on these platforms. Although some of its content is behind paywalls, there are some ways to read on Medium for free, such as subscriptions to newsletters, friend links, or free limited reads.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is the file format of the medium blog?
A:The articles on Medium are stored in structured formats, usually in Markdown, JSON, and displayed in HTML format for readers.
Q: How to Unlock or Bypass Paywalled Medium Articles?
A: Most platforms, including Medium, don’t allow bypassing paywalls, but you can extend the access via the incognito mode or free monthly limit and share on socials. The best way to support writers and get full access is by subscribing to Medium.
Q: What are the free Alternatives to Medium?
A: If you are looking for similar platforms that offer free access to articles, you could try
- Substack
- Dev.to
- Quora
