Medium: Help List
Medium Help — How to do Stuff on Medium
Here is all the useful Help Tips of How-to-do-Stuff-on-Medium I have accumulated over the three years using Medium. In a convenient list and last revised May 2020.
Often, it is easier to find Medium Help on a Google search, precede search term with Medium: ie
Medium: Payment Program
Medium: Tags
Remember that a Refresh is often required after changing stuff.
Story: Drafts and Public and Unlisted
When Stories are listed, under Your Stories there are three types, Drafts, Public and Unlisted.
- Drafts are just that, a Draft of a story under development. These are private to you. Most publishers require stories to be a Draft. A Draft can be posted/promoted to published.
- Public: A published story can have visibility called Public where everyone, including search engines, can view the story.
- Unlisted: A published story could also have restricted visibility, known as Unlisted. Unlisted Published Stories can only be navigated to and read via a direct link, so cannot be searched for.
Why Make a Story Unlisted?
Making a story Unlisted restricts who can read it.
Unlisted stories will not appear in the home feed, profile page, tag page, or search on Medium, nor will they appear in notifications or email digests.
I have used Unlisted Posts to contain additional information, that will only be accessed if required (from a link in the main story), thereby making the main story that much shorter [see story Rules of Engagement Broke?, where there are links to several reference documents.]
Don’t forget anything underlined is a HYPER-LINK to another story or web site. Mouse hover over link to see the address it links to.
Title, Subtitle and Kicker Lines
Hints and Keyboard Shortcuts
When editing a story, if you press the three dots (top right) … there is an option Hints and keyboard shortcuts. You can cycle through the screens, each showing different help. Particularly useful is the reminder for bulleted and numbered lists. It also shows how to “mention” a known Medium person, by starting name with a “@”.
Most hints below are also in Medium tips and tricks for Medium writers.
Mention
type @ symbol, type name, select from list.
ie me is translated → Stevie Adler
Word Count
CTRL-A -gives total word count of story at top left (when editing a story). CTRL-A is select ALL, selecting less will give the word count of that selected.
Double-Click -selects a word.
Triple-Click -selects a paragraph.
Single Line Spacing
Hitting Enter, on a line, creates a new paragraph (two lines).
Hitting Shift-Enter, on a line, gives Single Line Spacing.
Lists
- type * space -Bulleted list
- type 1 . space -Numbered list
Some Keyboard Shortcuts
after selecting a chunk of text (Windows PC)
Copy CTRL-C
Paste CTRL-V
Cut CTRL-X
Change the Default Centre of an Image.
Edit
Alt-Mouse Click on new centre and a green circle will appear.
And publish to review the new centre.
or
Watch Video(2:13): Set Featured Image and Set Focal Point
There is more help available -google search on Medium focal point
Two Types of Link
A box link or an inline link.
Copy and Paste link directly onto page
then hit Enter
a couple of seconds later the link will format into a box link thus:
or
Highlight text
Press the chain link icon
Paste link in
Hit Enter, to give:
A link to my favourite Microfiction story
[I prefer to also bold a link to make it stand out ie This is a Story]
Comment and Respond
Remember Medium Comments and a Respond are treated as stories.
Can Edit Comments and Responds -useful for obvious typos.
Can also Delete Comments-should you so wish.
Just click on the story (Comment/Respond) to read, then press Edit top-right, and edit like any story.
How to Feature a Story at the Top of your Profile.
Remember to Refresh
Having problems? Follow these Step-by-Step Instructions (PC)
Members: The bookmark indicator cycles through 3 options:
- Not set
- Set
- Ticked
Free-Members: The bookmark indicator cycles through 2 options:
- Not set
- Set
Backup: How to EXPORT Content
Medium Membership has privileges, the main one being that you can read as many “* Story for members” stories as you like. Free readers get 3 free reads a month starting at the beginning of each month. AND currently all links to Medium stories on Twitter act like Friend Links (ie are free).
You don’t have to be a member to join the Medium Partner Program to be paid for content.
Claps
Most Medium algorithms pre-date claps, and work on the simple logic of did you clap or not (being a fan). So as far as the system is concerned the number of claps is immaterial.
Each of us has worked out our own scale of clapping that we feel comfortable with. I do like to give a couple of claps for every comment received (Response) to acknowledge that someone has taken time to write to me.
To Cancel Claps
At any time a reader can cancel previous claps given.
Hover the mouse over the clap-hand icon (at the bottom of the story) and an X slides out — press that X and claps are cancelled.
A green halo around a User Icon denotes a Paying Member.
A Solid clap-hand for a story, denotes that you have clapped for that story.
An Outline clap-hand means you have not clapped for that story.
Customise Titles, Subtitles or Description
When previewing a story in Medium can see a different Title and/or Subtitle.
When previewing after an internet search can use a different Description as well as Title and Subtitle. The default description that appears in an internet search is the first 160 characters (approx) of the story — you can change this to give a proper description of what the story is about. This seems to me to be more useful.
See Custom titles & subtitles.
Or, see Step-by-Step instructions.
Email Notifications
Getting email notifications (or not) from a publication is controlled by the person receiving them, NOT the publication.
Often a User will turn off email notifications.
There are 3 places to check:
Master on / off
- Person Profile — click Settings
- Section Email settings
- Scroll down to All Email
- on off
off — Don’t receive ANY email apart from Admin from Medium, need to set to on.
Emails from publications
- Person Profile — click Settings
- Section Email settings
- Scroll down to Emails from publications
- on off
Email from Each Publication
- Person Profile — click Settings
- Section Email settings
- Scroll down to Emails from publications
- Press Manage publication emails
- All “followed” Publications are listed
- Scroll to required publication
- Press the down chevron on right
- Click box Receive emails from this publication
There are plenty of other email notification settings that can be played with!
Publications
How To Add a Draft or Post to a Publication.
An Editor at the publication must first make you a writer for that publication.
On a publication the Navigation line has a fixed number of characters, quite a lot, but still fixed. The longer the text for each tab the less tabs you can have. So if you want more than six or seven tabs make the text for each tab really short.
The menu bar can be scrolled right and left (if items can not be seen).
Sometimes there is no obvious way to add a new tab/section heading.
This is a “workaround” [navigation menu option]
to get the next + to add a new section you have to :
check the box “add a tab…” at the bottom of the page
then discard that line (rubbish bin) below line just checked
ONLY THEN will the next + appear… press + and voila
More hints / tips when I remember them.
