On Oct 16, we started hearing from many users based in India that they couldn’t get to Medium either on the web or through the app. After investigating, our current understanding is that this is an issue happening at or above the Internet Service Provider (ISP) level, rather than on Medium’s side.

As far as we are aware, traffic from a number of ISPs in India, including Jio, Airtel, and Vi, is pointing to the wrong IP address for medium.com, disrupting your access.

We are working on reaching the ISPs to resolve this issue. As their customer, you have a stronger and more direct line of contact with them — we urge you to contact your ISP directly, report this problem, and push them for a resolution.

Here’s an example of an email that you could send to your ISP:

Hello,
I am a customer of your ISP. I am trying to connect to the website Medium.com on your network, and it is not working. Traffic to Medium.com should point to a Cloudflare IP address, and it is not. I am requesting this ticket be escalated to your NOC/DNS team to investigate why traffic is pointing to the wrong IP address, and correct or clear the DNS cache.

Thank you.

We’re posting this on medium.com, which means affected users won’t be able to see it. We’re sharing here in the hopes of being as clear and transparent as possible, and because we want the information out there. If you know someone affected by this issue, please share the information we have here.

You can also share this link to our status page with anyone you know who is affected. As it’s not a Medium URL, users should be able to see it and follow for updates.

What can you do?

While we wait for the ISPs to remedy the problem, here are some self-help instructions on how to change your device’s DNS, which may resolve your issue.

How to update your DNS

These steps let you replace your ISP’s DNS (like Airtel, Jio, or Vi) with a public resolver such as:

• Cloudflare: 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1
• Google Public DNS: 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4

See below for sharable images of these steps.

🪟 Windows 10 / 11

1. Open Settings → select Network & Internet.
2. Click Ethernet (for wired) or Wi-Fi (for wireless).
3. Choose your active connection → click Edit next to “DNS Server Assignment.”
4. Select Manual.
5. Turn on IPv4 and type:

• Preferred DNS: 1.1.1.1
• Alternate DNS: 1.0.0.1
  (or use Google: 8.8.8.8 / 8.8.4.4)

6. Click Save.

7. Optionally open Command Prompt and run ipconfig /flushdns to clear the cache.

🍎 macOS ( Monterey, Ventura, Sonoma )

1. Open System Settings → Network.
2. Select your active connection (Wi-Fi or Ethernet) → click Details ….
3. Go to DNS in the sidebar.
4. Click + under “DNS Servers.”
5. Enter 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1 (or 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4).
6. Click OK, then Apply.

You can verify the change by visiting https://1.1.1.1/help

📱 iOS (iPhone / iPad)

1. Open Settings → Wi-Fi.
2. Tap the ℹ️ (i) next to your connected network.
3. Scroll to Configure DNS and tap it.
4. Select Manual.
5. Delete any old DNS entries.
6. Tap Add Server and enter:

• 1.1.1.1
• 1.0.0.1
  (or Google’s 8.8.8.8 / 8.8.4.4)

7. Tap Save in the top-right corner.

🔹 Note: This change applies per Wi-Fi network, so you’ll need to repeat it for each network you use.

🤖 Android ( Android 9 Pie and newer )

1. Open Settings → Network & Internet → Advanced → Private DNS.
2. Select Private DNS provider hostname.
3. Enter one of these hostnames:

• For Cloudflare: one.one.one.one
• For Google: dns.google

4. Tap Save.

🔹 On older Android versions (8 or below), go to your Wi-Fi settings → long-press your network → Modify network → Advanced options → change DNS 1 and DNS 2 manually.

What’s next?

We hope that as more customers contact their ISPs, the ISPs will be more motivated to address the problem on their end. And remember, for updates, our status page here is the best place to check and share. As it is not a medium.com URL, even affected users should be able to reach it.

Regarding issues connecting to Medium from India was originally published in The Medium Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hey Ev, what about mentions?

I’ve always wanted to let people know that I’ve mentioned them in my Medium stories.

Mentioning people could draw them into the conversation, like how joanna coles recounts conversations with Peggy Northrop and Kirsten Gillibrand in her story about being a working mother. And did you see Chris Stout-Hazard’s hilarious ranking of the presidential candidates’ logos? What if Marco Rubio, Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O’Malley all knew that Chris has something to say to them? It’d be amazing.

The ability to mention each other could really bring people together. David points out that mentions could greatly increase creative expression. Sure, we’re not the first ones to do this (you used to work for Twitter, right?), but it could be huge for Medium.

For our big event in October, let’s introduce mentions on Medium. I know it would hook Mario Sundar, who wrote “Five Ways to Get Me Hooked on Medium.”

Here’s how I see it working: Start writing, type @, and then the name of the person you want to mention. When you mention someone, we’ll send them a notification so they know why their ears are burning. By default, you’ll get push and email notifications from people you follow, but you can control which notifications you receive in your settings.

That’s it. What do you think?

Hey Ev, what about mentions? was originally published in The Medium Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Creating an application

Applications can be viewed and created through the Medium Applications page, which you can get to through your Settings. We require a name, description, and at least one callback URL to get started, though we also encourage you to add an image. This information will help users identify your application when logging in through Medium, so it should be something they will recognize and trust.

If you created an application through the beta program, you should find it already listed on your applications page.

Once you’ve created your application, we’ll give you your client ID and client secret. Then you can head on over to our API documentation and build something awesome! Or use one of our SDKs for Node, Go, or Python to get started faster. And if you have any questions, drop us a line at developers@medium.com.

Happy hacking!

The Medium API is now open to everyone was originally published in The Medium Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Starting today, customization options for publications have increased exponentially.

Not everyone’s a designer (or even has a visually artistic eye — I speak with authority here), but anyone can make their Medium publication look unique and professional by keeping in mind a few guiding principles.

On migration

Publications can be made from scratch on Medium or built from existing work migrated from another platform. Our Help Center has a guide that will help you migrate your work to Medium (and your custom domain, if that’s your jam).

On logos, avatars, and headers

First things first: You’ll want to start designing your publication by creating a snazzy logo, avatar, and header.

We’ve expanded and made more powerful elements that have already existed for publications.

Use transparent .png files for logos, avatars, and headers. This will make your logo look great with all backgrounds and headers. You can make these in editing programs like Photoshop or GIMP.

• Publication logos (the logo that shows up at the top of each story) should be no larger than 600px wide and 75px high.
• Avatars (the icon that shows up beside the name of your publication, such as at the bottom of every post) should be 60x60px in size.
• Headers come in small, medium, and large. You can also put an image in a large header: The aspect ratio is 2:1 with the minimum size being 1500px wide and 750px high.

More about headers

Since headers are brand new, there are a number of different ways that you can achieve a personalized and unique look by playing with our different options.

On header sizes and image options

The header for your publication can be small, medium, or large. If choosing small or medium, you’ll be able to choose a background color only.

For large headers, you can also choose a background image. While we require the image be at least 1500px wide and 750px high, we recommend you make the largest image possible with a 2:1 ratio (meaning it’s twice as wide as it is tall).

Large header images might be cropped, depending on the viewing area on desktop or mobile, so you can customize the focal point to ensure the part of the image you want people to always see is right where it should be.

On logos in headers

If you are going to have a logo inside your header, making that logo as high resolution as possible is the best way to make your logo look awesome, everywhere.

We assume all logos are retina, meaning that the logo is uploaded at twice the size we assume it will be displayed. If you upload a 2000px wide and 1000px high logo, Medium interprets it as 1000px wide and 500x tall. We do this so logos look great everywhere, from a mobile phone to a giant retina screen.

Logos scale down to fit inside your header if they are a larger resolution than the area we dedicate to logos, but logos that are smaller than the logo area won’t scale up.

Bottom line: Make your logos as high resolution as possible. Pick a size you want, then double it.

On header layout options

In addition to size, you can customize your header with a logo, text, or both.

Your logo or text can be left justified or centered within your header. Experiment to see what looks best with various sizes and colors. The world (or rather, header) is your oyster.

Those People chose a Medium header with a small, square logo and two lines of text for their title, all of which they left justified.

On header colors and how they affect your publication

You can customize the background color for your header image to be any shade of the rainbow you desire. Our editor requires a hex color (hex colors are a mix of numbers and letters that tell a website what color to render) so that we match the exact shade you seek. You can also choose between “subtle” and “bold” themes. Picking bold will utilize your customized color more prominently throughout your publication, whereas subtle will implement it, well, more discreetly.

Want to find your perfect header color and its hex color? This amazing site, Color Hex, is exactly what you need.

Experiment with this color palette. Your choice of customized color affects all the colors within your publication (including highlights, buttons, and other parts of the user interface), dynamically choosing complementary shades so everything works together.

This is another reminder about why it’s important to use transparent .pngs for your publication logos. Transparent .pngs will appear as the same color as the background color you choose, making your publication look professional.

You might need to tweak your logo file to accommodate this (which can easily be done via Photoshop, GIMP, or another image editing program).

On tag sections

You can customize navigation from your publication’s homepage based on tags that you use in your publication. Think of these as sections for your publication. Talkback, for example, might use Feedback, Updates, and How To to help people find the specific types of posts they seek quickly. Choose the tags you want to feature in the homepage navigation area — you can select up to seven. About is always a tag, so keep that in mind while designing.

On favicons

Don’t you love it when a site has a cool icon in your browser tab, making it easy to recognize a specific site at a glance?

Us, too.

Now, your publication can have its own custom favicon. This feature is available for publications hosted on custom domains. Want to find out how to get your publication a custom domain? Never fear, there’s a Help Center article for that.

Don’t want or have a favicon? That’s cool. You can use ours.

On laying out your publication

While not a new feature, layout is arguably the most important aspect of a publication.

The homepage layout tab allows you to customize the organization, layout, and look of your publication.

The options are nearly endless.

Let’s start with layout: Articles can appear as a grid, in a stream like your home stream, or as a list. In this first option, I chose to have one section, sorting posts by date published, and have them displayed as a grid.

Publications, as they grow, often need more organization than this first example. Organization is also crucial to take full advantage of the tags you can put in your publication headers.

For organization, you can build sections to highlight featured articles or order your stream by published date, tags, or trending posts.

Let’s get fancy with our publication, shall we?

In this example, I chose to make my top section a featured area, showing off two of my favorite Talkback posts with the rest of my articles displayed as a grid below.

Changing a small part of your layout can significantly impact the look of your publication. In this example, I changed my image layout to have no margins and overlaid the images with title text.

The difference is significant (and, in this case, not good).

As I said before: The world (of publications) is your oyster.

Go out there and make your mark.