178 Comments

I continue to appreciate Substack's user-friendliness and non-censorship.

I hope this is never successfully attacked.

There are a lot of us here in the "free speech zone".

Expand full comment

There are certainly attempts to make it happen. But yes, that is one of the best aspects of the platform.

Expand full comment

Who rules your heart, is always a really good question. You already know, for their actions tells its story.

Expand full comment

Could not agree more, John.

Expand full comment

I still haven’t learnt how to drive Silubstack yet. I have to just click from the email I receive. I’m an old woman. It’s not their fault it’s mine.

Expand full comment

Love that they switched completely to Substack. I’d be a paying subscriber to more newsletters if they switched from Patreon etc to Substack. It’s too much of a hassle to have different accounts/profiles. I love getting all of my media from one place.

Expand full comment

I did the same. Had multiple sites and a Patreon and even a podcast. Came here to read an article recommended, had a fantastic READER experience,....and never left.

I migrated everything over and closed everything down but my WorldAnvil site...which supports my substack.

Never been so happy!

Expand full comment

I mean, this is nice for people and I’m sure there are people who will use it. I may do some changes but I have generally stuck with the basic format.

Mainly because if people need something flashy in order to attract subscribers, it feels to me like you’re trying to distract from the quality of your content. Some people will interact with the main page, but the important thing is the content itself.

Reading it in an email means not seeing the main page. Unless I can customize the email or the individual post more with these options, there isn’t much use for them.

At least that’s my take.

Expand full comment

I'd actually really like some extra stats pages to show how many clicks one is getting through to the homepage. Makes me wonder how much tweaking the homepage actually does.

Having said that, I much prefer the simpler layouts. If I go to a new Substack page and am assaulted with lots of boxes and a strip of different categories then I generally find it too overwhelming.

Expand full comment

Absolutely, there are stats things which I would definitely like more of.

Expand full comment

I get that. Don't disagree, either.

I'm just hoping these tools will augment the quality content I strive to share.

If it draws your attention to the front page AND you snag them with quality, well heyyyy, win-win, right?

Expand full comment

Yes, ideally that's what we should want on some level. I can see some benefit to it. For example, one of my Substacks is a comic book. There are probably ways I could change it to make people like the comic more. But for my main Substack, probably not.

Expand full comment

Same, have a comic book also. But I'd love to figure a way to display books or speed drawings...

Time to play and see if we can improve,... or just work with what we have.

For me, either way works 💪

Expand full comment

Probably for me the thing I'd love to do for my comic book is give people the option to pay for a single post. For instance, I could offer a full comic in the post and they buy it for a single time without having to buy a yearly or monthly subscription.

The whole "get a single paid post for free" option is a step in the right direction.

Expand full comment

Totally agree. That's also a great idea.

Expand full comment

This will only work and Substack will be taken seriously if it’s executive don’t screw up. A lot of useless features are being implemented but support is non-existent. It’s been months since I have been chasing support and the CEO to import my mailing list but no response. I hope this won’t become another MySpace.

Expand full comment

💯

Expand full comment

Thanks for the update! Will there be a time we can use actual custom fonts?

Expand full comment

Would be awesome to have the same customisability that the ‘Sections’ pages now have, on ‘Tags’ pages too - for those of us who use tags to host various different series/themes. Thanks!

Expand full comment

I came here for an answer about that - I didn't realize tags sections were treated differently. Bummer!

Expand full comment

Makes sense! Hopefully we'll get that one in too.

Expand full comment

🥳 Thank you!

Expand full comment

Substack should stop making "improvements" — you've got a good thing going, and it's getting more complicated by the second. WTF does "We also recently shipped advanced homepage layouts, which allow you to highlight your publication’s different content streams by adding a customizable subscribe banner, blocks for your tags/sections, or a sidebar module featuring your contributors or podcasts" actually mean? (I wanted to put "actually mean" in italics or bold face, but can't — now THAT would be an improvement I could understand. .May I suggest that whoever wrote your original post checks into Wikipedia and look up the term "FOG index"? PS: Is "customizable" actually a word?

Expand full comment

valid pointy point

Expand full comment

Please, add Russian language

Expand full comment

Tell it to HiTlary Clinton she's got inside connections w/ Russian lobby

Expand full comment

the tool for converting WP blog posts into Substack posts doesn't seem very reliable. It really hasn't worked well for me. Is there any support for that? I can't see bringing over much content if I have to do alot of manual work to make it happen.

Expand full comment

Some very helpful new features. Thank you, Substack team, for making it easier to improve our sites, especially for people like me who are not totally up-to-date whith the latest technologies. I just can't keep up. 😉

Expand full comment

Lol, so I'm not the ONLY one? [fist bump]

Expand full comment

Please be more specific about the details of the new features... and expand less on other substack accounts and how interesting they are. 👉 I'm subscribed to this newsletter to get updates about new substack features. Please explain them to me with some more depth.

Expand full comment

I'm pretty sure this is to provide examples for us to behold. At least that was what I got from this...and I'm grateful to make comparisons. 🙏🏽

Expand full comment

Yes, but when you release new features, you have to explain them in detail... I didn't learn anything from this article, except that I need to dig into the settings to see what has changed...

Expand full comment

Automatic traduction and spelling mistakes/grammar check (for authors) by LLM should be a priority.

Also, am I the only one wanting to be able to justify the text of a post?

Expand full comment

Nope! I would love to be able to justify the text of my posts, too!

Expand full comment

Just tried the search fonction with the term "Dry fasting" (without quotes) in posts. Did not find my last one about it but a lot of unrelated posts lol.

Expand full comment

The new search function is complete junk. Big step backward.

Expand full comment

Great! Much appreciated, bit more control over the visual interface -- the pin options, could they be ordered somehow? Pin 1, 2, 3 etc instead of having to pin/unpin to get the order the way one wants using the most recent as top?

But, if not, great as is, still the most helpful platform I've tried, very user friendly, thanks again Substack!

Expand full comment

Good feedback on the pins; we'll consider that!

Expand full comment

Please!

Expand full comment

Looking forward to experimenting with the new themes!

Expand full comment

I can't wait to look at all the new layouts! Thanks 🙏🥰

Expand full comment

Finally, new things I can mess with instead of getting my writing done!

Expand full comment

u kno it buddie

Expand full comment

Ok done! That didn’t last long enough. Time to change the fonts some more

Expand full comment