How to Set Up a Custom Domain on Medium

Ifyou saw the heavily promoted new article by the CEO of Medium — Ev Williams — you might have been curious about one particular announcement.

Ev said Medium will be bringing back custom domains for publications.

I wanted to look into how this applies on Medium.com and if it had any advantages for most writers.

I also looked through Medium’s history to see how they used to handle it in the past.

Lastly, I documented how to set up a custom domain on Medium when they release the feature again (expected to be very soon)!

Let’s take a look!

If you’ve been on the platform for a long time or are familiar with its interesting history — you may have noticed several publications that don’t have “medium.com” in their URL.

These are custom domains leftover from the period of time Medium allowed users to opt to have that.

Regardless, they definitely did allow the extra service for a while.

From what I’ve gathered, they stopped offering this in November of 2017 due to some complications with cross-domains and SSL certificates (which they’ve apparently overcome by now).

Here’s a few huge examples of custom domains on Medium.com if you’re curious:

See how each of them almost looks like it’s a separate website, yet the user interface and platform are the same as Medium?

That’s what having a custom domain on Medium means.

You can choose your website URL but still run the website within the Medium environment!

If you’ve been on Medium.com for a while, I’m sure you’re aware of the many good and bad things about the platform.

Many of these translate over to how publications are run as well. (That being said — Medium has/are making many positive changes to publications these days!)

I always try to look at writing articles from several angles.

And making the big decision to move your publication over to a custom domain on Medium is no different.

Custom domain:

Medium domain:

🙌 Winner 🙌: Medium domain

Custom domain:

Medium domain:

🙌 Winner 🙌: Medium domain — This means your articles will have a better chance at appearing higher on Google searches if you use the Medium domain.

Custom domain:

Medium domain:

🙌 Winner 🙌: Custom domain

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