Using Medium: A Medium for Bloggers
Medium is a site that allows users to blog, focusing on the words. This is unlike tumbler which usually focuses on pictures. You can however place pictures on your blog.
You may sign up through Facebook, Tumbler, or by regular sign up. I chose to use Facebook. I noticed that a Facebook friend popped up on my Reading List which is the home page.
The Reading List offers blogs or stories as Medium refers to them as. As well as blogging your own stories, you can read others as well.
Writing Your Story
To begin writing your story, simply Go to the upper left corner of your home screen and click on the M. A side menu will come up, and it will give you the option to go Home, your profile, write a New Story, view your Drafts, as well as viewing your Collections.
To write a new story, you would click New Story.
This blank template that you see behind this text is what one would use to write a story. Its a simple, elegant interface that is very easy to use and it feels as though you are writing a book.
As mentioned before, Medium focuses on the words, but as you can see, picures as well as videos can be inserted into your story.
Simply by dragging a picture to the blog screen, the picture will place itself onto your blog. When you place the picture, you can choose the size. The picure above is used more as a background, where as the picture below is a focal point. As you can see, you may add captions to your pictures. As soon as you add a picture, the option to caption comes up, and you can choose to caption or just leave it blank. This is a picture of the home screen with suggested stories for you to read.
As you can see below the picture, I have inserted a break in the story by clicking the Plus button that comes up when you hit enter. These breaks also make your story feel like a book.
“If you have quotes you can easily make them stand out in a block quote.”
-Maddie Miriani
To block quote, highlight the desired text and click the quotations on the popup bar.
“To pull your quote, click the quotations twice.” -Maddie Miriani
Publishing Your Story
Now once you have finished your story, there are a few things you can do. You can publish your story by clicking the arrow button at the top right corner. Another side menu will pop up and you will see options to publish or to send your draft to anyone, so they may add notes before you publish it. Once you have made sure you have no errors and your story is ready, press the Publish button. Your story will be publish and you will be taken to the published story.
The goal of all bloggers is for their words to be read, so after you publish your story, share your link with the world!
