How to Set Up a Custom Domain on Medium
Medium is re-releasing the custom domain feature soon — here is what you need to know!
If you 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!
Note: Just in case you haven’t become a Medium member yet, I’d love you eternally if you signed up using my referral link! I’ll get a small commission at no cost to you and you’ll get eternal love — win-win!
What is a custom domain?
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.
“Custom domains. Not that they ever went away entirely. Medium hosts tens of thousands of publications under their own domains.” — Ev Williams, CEO of Medium.com
Now I’m not sure about tens of thousands of publications having these, as the scraper service Smedian says there are only 11,575 publications in total.
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:
- https://towardsdatascience.com/
- https://uxdesign.cc/
- https://uxplanet.org/
- https://writingcooperative.com/
- https://psiloveyou.xyz/
- https://byrslf.co/
- https://blog.prototypr.io/
- https://entrepreneurshandbook.co/
- https://artplusmarketing.com/
- https://extranewsfeed.com/
- https://festivalpeak.com/
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!
What are the pros and cons of having a custom domain on Medium?
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.
1. Cost of having a custom domain on Medium:
Custom domain:
- A fee to register your domain name on a domain name registration site
- Yearly fees to maintain
Medium domain:
- Free!
🙌 Winner 🙌: Medium domain
2. Effects on SEO:
Custom domain:
- Depends on the publication — does not fully derive Medium’s high domain authority
- Examples: Towards Data Science — DA of 75, Writing Cooperative — DA of 53, Entrepreneur’s Handbook — 45
Medium domain:
- One of the highest domain authorities on the internet — 96!
🙌 Winner 🙌: Medium domain — This means your articles will have a better chance at appearing higher on Google searches if you use the Medium domain.
3. Coolness factor:
Custom domain:
- Having your own customized domain name grants a bit of esteem in a new viewer’s eyes (Think of receiving a business email from [email protected] vs [email protected])
- It’s just plain cool to see your own business/name as a website!
Medium domain:
- If you opt for the normal but free version, your website will always have ‘medium.com/’ in front of the publication name
🙌 Winner 🙌: Custom domain
How to set up a custom domain on Medium?
I’m basing this quick guide on a great previous post from years ago. Medium hasn’t released the feature yet (again), though, so some of these are assumptions.
I expect they’ll release the update within a few weeks and I’ll update this guide at that time.
*******UPDATE March 2020: Medium now has the feature back up and working — and it’s free! (It used to cost $75). Please check out their brief instructions here:
Things you need to set up your custom domain:
- Have a publication created on Medium.com
- Have a domain name purchased from a domain name registration website such as GoDaddy, HostGator, Hostinger, or NameCheap — Here is a guide for domain names to those unfamiliar with registering one.
Next steps to registering a custom domain on Medium:
- Inform Medium you want to turn your publication into a custom domain — Previously you had to send a request for this — Maybe there will be a submission function in the publication section this time, we’ll see soon!
- You’ll have to send Medium your: Publication URL, your registered domain URL, your domain registrar site (ex. GoDaddy)
- At one point Medium charged a $75 fee for doing this service to account for extra costs on their side. I’m not sure if they will restart this or make it free yet.
- If Medium approves, they will send you: a CNAME, and A Records — You can read more about them in this article too
- You have to log in to your domain registrar (ex. GoDaddy) and adjust the CNAME and A Record values to match the ones Medium gave you. Each site will have their own FAQ for doing this, so just google!
- Wait 4 to 24 hours and your new domain should be up and running!
Thanks for reading, and until next time — happy Mediuming everyone!
Note Again: Just in case you haven’t become a Medium member yet, I’d love you eternally if you signed up using my referral link! I’ll get a small commission at no cost to you and you’ll get eternal love — win-win!
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