[cjbest]

One of the founders here. Here's a copy of the response I posted on Twitter.

--

A response to @JohnONolan here to clear up some serious misunderstandings https://twitter.com/JohnONolan/status/1602330377812643850

First of all, huge respect to the Ghost team. Their open source contributions are valuable, and their approach to theming enables some great-looking things. That said, some important corrections:

Substack is not "powered by Ghost". Rather, we built our own theming API that’s compatible with themes built for Ghost, including those built by third parties.

The Free Press is using a modified Tripoli theme, built by Ahmad Ajmi, under a paid license. This is how this is supposed to work. It's good for the theme developer if we support this – you should check them out here. https://aspirethemes.com/themes/tripoli

This was relatively quick to build for Substack devs, because the structure of Ghost sites matches Substack fairly closely.

With respect to the search library, this is an open source library that we are using in a fully compliant way. John's own screen shot shows that we don't load it "from Ghost’s own CDN", it comes from jsDelivr https://www.jsdelivr.com

This is a standard way to use an open source library. It's pulling from the version that the sodo-search maintainers published to NPM (thank you!).

It is a good point that we should lock a version, so that if they accidentally published a minor version revision with breaking changes it doesn't cause problems for us. We’ve fixed that.

We’re grateful to the developer of the Tripoli theme and to Ghost for its contributors to open source work. We’re exploring ways to give writers more customization on Substack. This is one approach we’re considering but it’s too early to know if we’ll scale it up.

And @JohnONolan, thanks for the note at the end about potential collaboration. In our minds, we’re on the same side of an important battle for a better internet. We’re definitely up to chat.

[dmix]

Having themes work across multiple major platforms is a boon for theme designers (and people creating blogs). It's a great idea to standardize it as much as possible.

> John's own screen shot shows that we don't load it "from Ghost’s own CDN", it comes from jsDelivr

That bit was the strangest part of the accusations, this is the Ghost CEO, he should know jsDelivr is not really "their" CDN but a generic asset host.

> "However, directly loading scripts from our CDN on their platform is very bad for security." https://twitter.com/JohnONolan/status/1602330410490396672

jsDelivr is meant exactly for this purpose though, isn't it? For JS files to be reused across different sites so it can be cached easier? Not locking versions is the only real issue here.

[bakkoting]

Note that caching resources across sites isn't really a thing anymore. See https://github.com/whatwg/fetch/issues/904

[dmix]

TIL, makes sense from a (very limited) security perspective.

CDN caching was never that useful anyway, non-cached jQuery etc downloads fast these days. Publishing libraries on a centralized public CDN, where the same URL is used across different sites is still the primary value prop for jsDelivr regardless.

[skykooler]

> non-cached jQuery etc downloads fast these days.

...If you have a fast internet connection, which is what all web devs seem to expect these days. jQuery etc are still just as big and heavy as ever.

[cjbest]

Yes this is how we see it. And we've fixed the version lock thing.

[dang]

Ok, I've inserted a "(not)" into the title above as a way of merging this information while preserving the original title.

[berry_sortoro]

Why even in brackets? It is NOT powered by Ghost. They use code so they can use Ghost themes and some search lib that was made by ghost or ghost uses as well or whatever but its NOT AT ALL Ghost.

[dang]

I did that just to be cautious.

[berry_sortoro]

Cautious of what?

[dang]

Of being accused of taking sides on a point that was possibly (if not probably) still disputed.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

[xNeil]

Hi Chris! Love what you're doing with Substack. One quick thing though - this may seem weird, but Substack at the moment does not, in my opinion, offer a lot of customisation of the website. If you see a website, it's extremely easy to tell its a Substack.

Over the past year, I've only read high quality Substack posts - and my brain has sort of come to instinctively believe that if I see that specific layout, the post will be high quality. E.g. (not a very nice one) but in general, if I see the Medium layout, my brain almost immediately get turned off, believing the quality of the content to be sub-par.

I think individual theming, as in the case of The Free Press, takes away that immediate notion. I understand that the vast majority of people will not face this issue, but I think I will. I just wanted to know if you think this is an issue, and if it is, what you'll do to 'counter' it. I'd really like to hear your thoughts on this!

[cjbest]

This is a great point, and one that we're honestly in the process of trying to make progress on.

Ideally, I would love to have both:

- Writers and creators on Substack are in complete control of the brand and feel of their publication

And:

- All publications look & work well - Readers get the benefit of already understanding some of what this thing is, which makes it easier to subscribe with confidence - We can continue to ship rapid improvements across all of Substack

In practice, there are tradeoffs involved here and we're trying to figure out how to push both sides as far as possible, while maintaining a simple and powerful product.

[rchaud]

> E.g. (not a very nice one) but in general, if I see the Medium layout, my brain almost immediately get turned off, believing the quality of the content to be sub-par.

What you're saying about Substack is what people said about Medium in 2013. Just as Medium didn't go into the toilet overnight, Substack's universal theme isn't going to save it from irrelevance if the content isn't there.

[klelatti]

Just to support this perspective.

It’s not only the quality point - which I agree with - but the fact that you know it’s Substack means that readers immediately know it’s a newsletter.

Plus it stops you wasting time fiddling with themes too much!

[InvaderFizz]

Right now I would just be happy with code highlighting and formatting for my posts that wasnt utterly broken. Since last year, GitHub gist imports have had a warning message on them that is only supposed to trigger on non-printable characters, but triggers on literally every gist import for Substack.

Unfortunately, there is no other method for syntax highlighting on Substack.

Support responded after a few weeks that its on their roadmap, but considering how long its been, I'm not hopeful.

[cjbest]

Thank you for the feedback

[hiidrew]

I love substack. You guys have been doing a lot for the info landscape to return to the blogsphere. But I would love you even more if there was dark mode, I want to read in bed! -sincerely a huge fan of your platform

[internet_jockey]

There's dark mode in the app (iOS or Android) and in the web reader at substack.com (which you can see when you're logged in)

[hiidrew]

thanks, will have to check this out!

[devmunchies]

TIL you can have custom themes on substack. My main (now voided) complaint with the platform was that you couldn’t stand out aesthetically.