Why We Moved to Medium

Wide Island View has changed formats a few times in its decade-long lifetime. From PDF newsletter to a fully-featured website publication — we’ve been constantly evolving in order to grow and fulfill the interests of our readers and contributors.

Which is why you’re reading this article right now! There are a few reasons why we’ve chosen to rebrand and move our content to Medium, so I’d like to introduce them to you so that you can understand what this means and also how you can be involved.

Here are three main points for why we changed our system:

1. No Website Hosting Costs

One of the greatest struggles for Wide Island View has been managing the high costs of website domains and hosting. While we love having our own Wordpress website, it was becoming difficult to manage given we are an organization run by volunteers.

2. It Makes Content Creation Simple

This is possibly my favorite point about this change. The process on Medium of adding a writer is so easy and takes only a matter of minutes. I can invite users through email and in a single click, you can set up your profile and begin drafting articles. It’s a simple process and through your writer profile, you can be given proper credit for all your written content. It’s a system that I believe in and I expect will increase the amount of meaningful content we can create together!

3. Medium Articles Are Pleasant to Read

Medium is pretty amazing at making articles easy to read and share, so I’m excited to be moving our platform to this great website. If you’ve not yet heard of Medium, take a look around and enjoy it! (But do note that articles with a star next to them are not free to read. None of our articles will be limited in this way, so don’t worry!)

So, thanks so much for taking the time to read this and follow us as we evolve together. I look forward to reading your submissions and creating meaningful content that we can be proud to share.

よろしく、Wide Islanders! I’ll see you soon!