352 Comments

Thanks to everyone who wrote in about the difficulty creating hard breaks! That functionality (shift+enter, cmd+enter, or ctrl+enter) should be restored. We're working on some of the remaining feedback and hope to have more updates for you soon.

Expand full comment

What was the difficulty regarding hard breaks?

And also, where exactly can you read about the issues that this new "more powerful editor" resolves? I'm not sure exactly what's new here, but I'm excited to find out!

Expand full comment

What are hard breaks?

Expand full comment

The opposite of easy ones.

Expand full comment

We need big breaks

Expand full comment

The biggest breaks. The best breaks.

And the ability to post images and videos, after all, "this is the nineties!".

Expand full comment

I assume they are like line breaks or stanza breaks in poems-- breaks independent of a right margin's more prosey arbitrariness

Expand full comment

Hello, rrt. Just like Karen mentioned to Bailey today, the hyperlinks-keep-going-into-following-spaces-and-text issue is still ongoing. Could you resolve that?

Expand full comment

Totally still happening. There's a workaround, but it's kind of a pain.

Expand full comment

IN ADDITION, ANOTHER SIMILAR (AND SIMILARLY ANNOYING) PROBLEM. Not only does the hyperlink continue into the following line, but so does the style. Without adding A LOT of additional spaces (which I obvs don't want), I can't come up with a way to avoid this. When I try to change the style on the following line, it changes the style on the preceding one. When I fix the preceding line, the style changes back on the following one. This is, once again, preventing me from sending out a post that I had planned for tomorrow morning (and which will become stale if not sent out by Wedensday morning). COME ON GUYS: YOU ARE MAKING IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME TO DO MY WORK.

Expand full comment

OHH MY GOD

Expand full comment

Why?

Expand full comment

Any word on bolding? lol

Expand full comment

still can't do a line break

Expand full comment

Thank you very much! But another request: Could we PLEASE have the ability to justify left, right, or CENTER? Thanks!

Expand full comment

Yes. I use Hebrew within posts, and it messes everything up to have the Hebrew justified on the wrong side.

Expand full comment

Seriously this is like when Apple didn't include "copy" and "paste" in its first iPhone. There's no excuse for such basic functionality to be missing.

Expand full comment

Apple didn't include Copy and Paste because it cut too close to what that ship of Pirates has been doing from the beginning....except now it's mostly your data they secretly call loot.

Expand full comment

OH OH

Expand full comment

Yes! Especially also for images on the post AND email.

Expand full comment

Do we really need to justify our desire for justification?

Expand full comment

Not being able to justify is driving me insane.

Expand full comment

yes, this has always been pathetic

Expand full comment

Yes, please!!

Expand full comment

Yes, please!

Expand full comment

Please!

Expand full comment

YES!!!!!

Expand full comment

Two issues I've just noticed.

- Hitting the space button after text with a link on it prolongs the hyperlink instead of breaking it.

- Shift + Enter no longer work at all.

Please fix this, I'm sure you'll notice if you try modifying this very post about the new editor.

Expand full comment

I'm going to do like the people with the viral tweets and make an ask below:

@Substack, do you think you could make the welcome page optional? Though I'm sure it's been beneficial to my Substack before, I've just noticed in a campaign test that it now causes most people to bounce without even having been exposed to the main page and the articles that I promote. Furthermore, I can tell people who subscribed in that fashion are least likely to be engaged (and therefore impossible to expect to turn into paid subscribers) specifically because they don't really know what it is they subscribed to.

I believe the welcome page has its value especially for the major publications out there that can automatically boast about hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of paid subscribers, but for the people who do not (yet), it's a hindrance towards their own visibility on their own Substacks. In fact, now that Substack as a company is becoming more and more of a household name, the welcome page comparatively depreciates the value of smaller Substacks, just like Twitter and YouTube do with follower and subscriber counts in the attention economy where one wouldn't be bothered with an opinion without numerically perceived credibility. What's more, with the recent publication format, the Subscribe button shows up in bright colors on every page, fully worded even on mobile, making it now more than prominent enough without requiring the welcome page. If anything, its one-line description could simply show up somewhere on the main page instead, right where it would be confronted and therefore validated by its full context. At least that's my point of view.

Expand full comment

I too would like to have potential new readers to just land on my magazine layout main page. Especially as it looks more like an online 'magazine" design. I think it would help.

Expand full comment

I definitely agree!

People prefer to click away from welcome pages, rather than click to discover the meat of a page.

Expand full comment

This is a really interesting comment; I think that it makes total sense that the "Welcome" page should be optional.

So to clarify, your issue with the mandatory "Welcome" page is that:

--people quit when they see it? and don't even go to your main page?

--people will sign up and then you feel that these signups aren't at all useful because there's no potential for these low-interest signups to become paid signups?

There's definitely no reason to make the "Welcome" page mandatory, so this is a good idea, but I'm curious about what the harm is in getting low-interest signups, since couldn't these people BECOME more interested over time as they experience the Substacker's stuff?

My own observation is that there should be a "faux paywall" to drive free signups that could later be converted into paid signups; the "faux paywall" would be just like a paywall, so you could "tease" as much material as you want before the reader hits the "faux paywall", but the difference is that they don't have to pay and instead just have to do a free signup.

I've noticed that all of my pleas and exhortations have been worthless; I don't get any additional free signups from begging and so the only thing that would change the game in my view would be this "faux paywall" method.

Expand full comment

interesting thoughts.

Expand full comment

It's really striking how I get a steady trickle of free signups each time I publish and my level of begging seems to have no bearing on that steady trickle!

People just don't care about my "calls to action", and I've tried quite a few styles of begging, so I think that "faux paywall" is the way to go!

And of course, many media outlets have the "faux paywall" system, though I don't know how many media outlets actually "tease" material before the "faux paywall" prevents further reading.

Expand full comment

About the two issues for which you asked clarification:

- For the first one, it isn't so much that people quit when they see the welcome page. It's that those who do bounce on it do so without even getting the opportunity to see the real content, even though by clicking on the link to the Substack they "should" have seen that content before making the decision to bounce. Basically, it's as if they made a click without "making" an impression. Therefore, they've given up on exploring the Substack without even being truly exposed to it in spite of the efforts that have been invested on both ends for them to reach the publication.

- For the second one, I do not argue that those who sign up on the welcome page without first seeing the content aren't useful at all, they are actually useful if anything in order to boost the subscriber count. Also, as you suggest, a small but interesting amount of them can and do become interested over time. My argument is that those who sign up because they've seen the content are a lot more likely to engage with it, making them de facto more valuable because they do not need the extra time, weeks, months to occasionally become interested in what they signed up for specifically because they already were really interested in the first place.

Can you tell me more about the mechanism of the "faux paywall?" I'm curious about how it works and how it could work on Substack. I'm really liking this idea of locking content not for money but simply for a free subscription, the more I think about it the more I'm surprised it hasn't been implemented yet.

Expand full comment

Thanks so much; I will look into these ideas that you presented here and I hope that Substack looks into these ideas as well.

The "faux paywall" allows you to tease as much of the article as you want; it could be 20% or 10% or whatever. Then to keep reading that have to do a free signup; this means they either do a free signup or quit, and I suspect many will do a free signup, especially if they like what they saw in what you "teased".

So I think that this would really drive free signups; maybe you can help me spread the word about this idea because other Substackers have responded VERY positively to this idea and I have no CLUE why the people in charge at Substack would object to this idea. :)

Expand full comment

I'm really digging this idea on the "faux paywall," and I mean REALLY in all caps. It would truly improve my publication because, at this time I'm keeping my archive paid while I would much rather have it accessible via free signup so that I could capitalize on more than a year of daily articles on a vast array of topics to encourage people to become free subscribers and begin their journey with me. I assume this would take some time to implement for Substack since they would actually have to clearly differentiate accesses between visitors and free subscribers and effectively have to take into account three categories of users (visitors, free subs and paids subs) instead of two (free subs and paid subs). But this is something I really want them to be working on right now. REALLY.

What I always say is, at the beginning of a newsletter, getting engagement is more important than getting revenue because the engagement that you get and the speed at which you manage to make it evolve organically in an exponential manner (that's the hardest part) will naturally augment the pool of people you can get revenue from. After all, why trying so hard to earn a living from tens or hundreds when you could do so from thousands of people instead. That's why I really wish Substack would ramp up their efforts on getting eyeballs on newsletters just as much if not more as they're doing at the current time to maximize paid subscriptions. As much as they aim to fight it, attention is indeed the currency of the Internet even outside of the advertisement model, because without visibility how could you get people to pay for what you offer if they don't even know it exist? And when luckily enough some do know it exists, why would they support something still nobody else knows about which therefore will be lacking impact in its own field?

Expand full comment

Fantastic! Maybe you and I could work together to grow a campaign for this feature; what do you think? :)

Expand full comment

I am mostly a reader here (so far) and as a reader I know what I do not want to inflict on MY readers. Most importantly if a green alien gives someone a link to a post of mine I expect the blue alien to be able to READ the post without ANY restrictions. If however I decide to have a paywall section then that will be reached through a link in MY posts with the paywall warning. I want to treat my customers with the respect I would like to receive.

Having the subscribe wall in the way of ANY interaction beyond READING is a perfectly reasonable request. Want to like my post, subscribe because you want to be part of the post. Want to comment, you gotta subscribe, want to use some yet to be determined intra-substack link then you gotta subscribe, but not for reading a public linked post.

A second irritation is the multipage quizz when subscribing. That is fine for the first time but have the grace to grab my default for all the relevant questions and let me change if I want (tweet, display in profile, etc) but let me subscribe in ONE page, we have scrolling on desktop and mobile that allows enough screen real estate to ask 100 questions, 3 or 4 is not hard to manage. Every UNNEEDED click shows disrespect, one click to reach subscribe page, change defaults as needed, another click on confirm button (at top AND bottom of the list of questions) and it is done. You can even have a default for how much you want to pay that is already selected so you simply CONFIRM your subscription.

Expand full comment

Luther have you tried tweaking the content on your welcome page? I tried a few different taglines before I landed on one that seems to really encourage people to click through. My first few taglines and button colours didn't work very well at all.

Expand full comment

I've actually been running the same tagline or slightly different versions of it roughly ever since I started my Substack, and it really worked in previous campaigns in getting me free subscriptions right into expections. The issue here is that thanks to the recent changes to stats now showing total traffic instead of new visits, I can compare the data to Google Analytics and notice that views on the welcome page are not counted in the total traffic. There, I can also see how many people came to the welcome page and bounced out of it, which is dramatically higher than those who made it to the home page, and even far greater than those who actually subscribed for free.

It's already puzzling that people who click on the URL for my home page would not get to have direct access to it. It's a lot more infuriating during campaigns when that still comes at the monetary cost of a click, even when the people who clicked didn't even get to see what they were actually meant to be sent to. That's why I ask that the welcome page could be made optional, so that at least when I'm attracting traffic onto my publication, people get to have direct access to it so that at the very least even if they don't subscribe they get a glimpse of what they would be missing.

Expand full comment

thank you for calling this out! we are on it

Expand full comment

Also, bold and italics no longer work inside the code block, which was quite useful for emphasis.

Expand full comment

Thank you, this is a major problem for me.

Expand full comment

Hi there - the spacing issue should now be fixed. Thank you for reporting it!

Expand full comment

Apparently not because it just happened to me. I mean, I can work around it, but it's annoying. Thanks!

Expand full comment

HOW? It's happening to me right now, and I don't know any work-around...

Expand full comment

Actually, I just entered the link AFTER all the text. That did the trick.

Expand full comment

Hi @Bailey. I noticed the same problem with hyperlinks-keep-going-into-following-spaces-and-text today (Monday). It's the same thing as happens in Wordpress (classic) editor and it drives me nuts on Wordpress. I LOVED that Substack didn't have the same issue. Except now it does, waaaaaa. :( Hopefully you will find a fix soon.

Expand full comment

Hey @Bailey and awesome Substack devs, thanks for fixing the greedy-hyperlinks problem, yay!

Expand full comment

Hey - i still experience the spacing issue. The poetry block feature does not make a difference either.

When editing, the spacing looks good, when i publish the spacing is gone. Pleease fix

Expand full comment

I just noticed the same thing happening whilst writing a new post. Please fix this.

Expand full comment

YES! I run into the Shift+Enter issue, too. It makes me sad. As a poet, it's one of the core things in any text editor that I need. Thank you for fixing it, sweet Substack team.

Expand full comment

Hi there - the spacing issue should now be fixed. Thank you for reporting it!

Expand full comment

Sorry to bother you, Bailey! Hope all is well! :)

You can see my comments elsewhere in this thread; I wonder how the below relates to my own idea about the "faux paywall".

https://support.substack.com/hc/en-us/articles/4418620510100

Expand full comment

Hey - i still experience the spacing issue. The poetry block feature does not make a difference either.

When editing, the spacing looks good, when i publish the spacing is gone. Pleease fix!

Expand full comment

I just used it and it wasn't working...

Expand full comment

Yes, it works. For me, at least. Thank you for the speedy repairs.

Expand full comment

Just discovering this capability on substack via you! Thank you! I also struggle with my poetry here with spacing, how do you achieve tabs and lots of space between words? During publishing my substack always corrects it and omits the spacing I intended on.

Expand full comment

Not sure. For me it's mostly the spacing between lines that I'm very particular about. However, there is a "poetry block" option underneath the "more" button of the toolbar. I've never used it, but the promise is that the block maintains the original spacing while publishing. This may be the thing you are looking for. Skinless Grape. Intriguing title. Sounds a bit like the winemaking process to me. I'm going to check that out.

Expand full comment

Thank you! I appreciate the info very much. And mahalo for checking out my publication! It does sound a bit like a winemaking process, although it is not! 'Tis advice from a clown teacher of mine as far as what the state of vulnerability feels like. To be a skinless grape is to be ones most vulnerable self.

Expand full comment

Nice. That sounds interesting, and it is a very accurate image for vulnerability. I just like the wine making process. And I am always looking to find poets I don't know. I try to use my substack also as a hub for my audience to discover talented writers. So, I'm looking forward to read (and share) your work,

Expand full comment

Very much the same! Nice to meet you! I am very new to substack, and our substack-founded poetry acquaintance is a lovely perk to this day. Aloha!

Expand full comment

The poetry block doesn’t keep the original spacing - it double spaces everything! Annoying and I can’t get rid of the spacing

Expand full comment

The workaround I use in the meantime is I copy-paste text I wrote with Shift+Enter on previous posts into the new editor, and then I write over them to keep their line breaks. I hope that can help while Substack corrects this eventually.

Expand full comment

I'm going to try that if needed. Thanks for the tip!

Expand full comment

Yes, LOL, just noticed this about 3 minutes ago while editing.

Expand full comment

Looking better. Any plans to allow subscripts and superscripts, and Greek characters, and mathematical symbols?

Expand full comment

+1 to this!

Expand full comment

Hello, love the new design and it's a lot more user friendly for me now.

About the new "Refer a friend" button: are you implementing inbuilt referral program functionality in to substack?

Expand full comment

Another vote for a referral program! It's one of the biggest gaps from other email service providers that have open APIs.

Expand full comment

I would love a referral program.

Expand full comment

Same question for me.

Expand full comment

It could be awesome!

Expand full comment

Boosting this to the best of my meager abilities because I would love an answer on this too!

Expand full comment

Please! We need paragraph indents.

And if possible the ability to change the size of plain text for de/emphasis?

We are all accustomed to all of the editing features of a normal word processor. Would be great to have that functionality here!

Expand full comment

REQUESTS:

Justifying ability

Underlining

Fonts & sizes rather than just pre-assigned styles

Choice of size & thickness of break lines

Ability to put text in columns

Ability to put images next to text

Ability to place multiple images next to one another

Expand full comment

Late to this thread, but I concur with the request for underlining.

Expand full comment

*adds text align*

Expand full comment

yes yes YES.

Expand full comment

Well, now we've all got a huge problem. I scheduled my daily letter to my subscribers for 4:30am eastern - as I've been doing for weeks. And NOTHING. No delivery. I went in and re-published it by hand. NO DELIVERY AGAIN. I've got thousands of paying customers NOT receiving what they expect. THIS UPGRADE IS A FAILURE in every possible way. I know it is early in California, but we've got a huge problem here. And this upgrade should go in the trash immediately and the former editing and delivery program restored ASAP. I've been with you for a long time - and am a Substack fellow. My experience with you all has been professional and first-rate. Until 12 hours ago when literally everything flew through the floor. Don't just pass these comments on. FIX THE PROBLEMS now.

Expand full comment

I was able to resend my newsletter by going and sending it by hand - but here's the glitch - it only works to the free subscribers. I literally can't send anything to just my paid list either by advance scheduling or by sending it immediately. It shows up on the webpage but not via email or on the app.

Expand full comment

Sorry that I doubted but you're entirely right, you are a Substack Fellow (https://on.substack.com/p/introducing-the-new-batch-of-substack) and you do have thousands of paid subscribers (https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/). Hopefully that can make the Substack team fix issues faster than my comment isn't doing right now.

Expand full comment

I am enjoying the included images with the editor. Now I do not have to go to Pixabay and save an image to my pc to use. Thanks for the new resource!

Expand full comment

Just to pile on, you REALLY need to restore shift + enter!

Expand full comment

Hi there - the spacing issue should now be fixed. Thank you for reporting it!

Expand full comment

Fixed but you have to do a hard refresh on the browser (how to: https://www.documate.org/resources/what-is-a-hard-refresh-how-to-do-a-hard-refresh-in-any-browser). Closing the browser entirely and restarting will also work.

Expand full comment

We hear you! And sorry for the inconvenience. We should have this resolved soon.

Expand full comment

I need to send out an exceptionally important post TUESDAY 4/5. If the formatting is messed up, it may cost me revenues. I am NOT happy about this.

Expand full comment

Embarrassing! Rollout to the whole collective, only to find basic functionality missing! I am sure the one who pressed 'commit' are feeling a bit sheepish and working hard.

Expand full comment

OTOH you could just rollback to the editor we were used to, until you get these significant gaps worked out.

Expand full comment

Thank you, looking forward to the iteration and new functionality built on top of this! 💚 🥃

Expand full comment

Can I embed MixCloud and Spotify yet? I'd like that functionality please.

Expand full comment

samesies,

Expand full comment

Yeah, I was just trying to embed a Mixcloud show and realised it doesn't work.

Expand full comment

any updates on Mixcloud?

Expand full comment

Suddenly the tool bar is stuck at the top of the page again. This happened before but then it returned to floating mode. Is this controlled in settings somewhere? Please tell me it's not permanently affixed there.

Expand full comment

We are looking into this issue and would love to learn more so we can help fix the problem. Would you be willing to write to our support team with more context on what you are experiencing? You can send us a message here: https://support.substack.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

Expand full comment

I hope I'm not going to come across as unreasonable, but it's been a month since my request for help. I sent the information you requested and had no reply or update. It's been a week since my reminder and I've not even had an acknowledgment on it. Please let me know what is going on.

Expand full comment

I responded to that link on April 5th. I've heard nothing since. There are others with this issue. Any progress?

Expand full comment

I'm happy to. Thanks for the quick reply.

Expand full comment

Hi John! So sorry to hear about this. Let me check in with our team.

Expand full comment

Please see new comments below.

Expand full comment

Thanks Bailey. Shortly after my last comment I recieved an email from Lionel at support. It included the text of a message from Bruno that somehow never made it's way to my email. Lionel asked for some further information and promised to get back to me. I've complied to the best of my ability and look forward to his possible solution. Thanks again. - John

Expand full comment

I've had no further contact from support and now have the additional problem of being unable to embed links in text. When I highlight the desired text and click on the link icon the customary pop up window no longer appears. I would greatly appreciate your help with that issue in addition to an update on the resolution of my original support request.

Expand full comment

Yes, it's true, totally mad. On the newest iPhone pro, in Safari, no tool bar except at the top. It's a 3-ring circus using Substack

Expand full comment

Thanks, keep up the good work!

Expand full comment

Hey, can I make one request for substack. In Dashboard, under scheduled posts, I wish the forthcoming posts also listed the Day of the Week that the posts is scheduled to come out on, not just the date and time.

Expand full comment

It looks so good, love it!

Expand full comment

Nice, you called me out and I have to be vulnerable on the internet

Off the top of my head my worldview has been shaped by:

1) The Inner Game of Tennis - Tennis is the perfect sport to understand oneself

2) [Upanishads (Eeshwaran translation)](https://www.amazon.com/Upanishads-2nd-Eknath-Easwaran/dp/1586380214) - The oldest study of consciousness

3) [The Big Score: The Billion Dollar Story of Silicon Valley Michael S. Malone](https://www.amazon.com/Big-Score-Billion-Dollar-Silicon/dp/1953953166) - Everything in the valley changes, but also nothing does

4) [Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat](https://www.saltfatacidheat.com/) - I like beautiful abstractions, and she applies a very computer sciency approach to cooking

5) Ecclesiastes - Everything is meaningless

6) [App: Waking Up by Sam Harris](https://www.wakingup.com/) - The present moment is all we have, enjoy it

7) [Commencement speech: Shonda Rimes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuHQ6TH60_I): She set out on a completely different path but ended up successful in her own way

8) [Wealthy, Successful and Miserable - Charles Duhigg](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/21/magazine/elite-professionals-jobs-happiness.html) - How to fight prestige

9) How will you measure your life? by Clayton Christensen - a tie between this and Innovator's Dilemma :)

10) Quote: "Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.” ― Pema Chodron

11) Favorite word: Kaizen

Expand full comment