@manton
Is there an article somewhere on how to move from #Substack to Micro dot Blog?
Would seem handy right now.

@help

https://micro.blog/

@tchambers Micro.blog can import Substack email lists, but we don’t have a good help page for it yet. The tricky part is if someone wants to sell subscriptions. Micro.blog is good for free newsletters, and Ghost is probably better for paid newsletters.

@manton OK thanks Manton!

@manton @tchambers A help page on importing Substack posts as well as email subscribers would be a good start. Does the post import bring in images and other media too?

@manton I will point out that you can embedd forms for other providers just fine, though. I do this myself: got a newsletter form embedded in the footer and another on a separate page. In my case its powered by convertkit which vets people before they let them send emails. Its also mainly focused on content creation and monetization.

EDIT: I hope this doesn’t come off as dismissive of your own newsletter service. Honestly the fact that I can so easily customize my blog to fit the needs of my content is a major plus, imho.

@moonmehta @tchambers Yes, the Substack post import also copies images to your blog, assuming they’re still online so Micro.blog can download them during the import.

@manton :) Its refreshing to see a platform developer who is cool about people using other platforms. Although with all the crossposting capabilities of this site, I suppose that is to be expected lol

@mercymorbid Thanks! We believe very strongly in no lock-in and compatibility with as many other services as possible. Should be easy to leave Micro.blog, and hopefully easy to return too. 🙂

@moonmehta Are you considering moving away from Substack?

@manton Oh, neat. It didn’t work for me some months ago but back then I think I tried importing via RSS. I will give it another shot.

@mercymorbid It’s one of the best things about Micro.blog, and makes it easy to digest things you don’t like about it. Because you aren’t stuck.

@moonmehta True, true! But there is also very little I don’t like about this site as a platform.

@pratik I’m considering doing so. Haven’t made a decision yet. There are many challenges, just the tip of which I’ve shared with @kev. And, for two platforms that don’t belong in that initial argument I made, WordPress and Micro.blog, I have other issues. WordPress is so crufty and full of friction that I can’t focus on doing actual writing and work there. Micro.blog is simply nowhere nearly as full featured or reliable for my professional space blog.

However, what I might do is try moving my personal longform blog over to Micro.blog and see how that goes. The risk is minimal there, and it fits in well with the social and frictionless aspects that Micro.blog is good at too.

@moonmehta Fair enough. I do hope you find a better home than a one that supports Nazis.

@manton Will RSS import from Account > Feeds copy images from my Substack to Micro.blog too? Or do I specifically have to export and import a full archive only for that?

@moonmehta No, only the dedicated import feature for each service will copy images. I want to improve this on the RSS import too but it doesn’t do that right now (and is also limited to the size of the RSS feed, which is usually limited to recent posts).

@manton Got it, thanks. Will give it a shot for my personal longform blog from Substack.

@manton Is there a single page where all of Micro.blog’s newsletter features are listed? I can’t find one on the forum’s Help Documents, and web searches are only leading me to disparate posts. It would really help people coming to Micro.blog.

@moonmehta Yeah, this is missing in our docs. I don’t think there’s much beyond the short mention on the Micro.blog Premium page.

@moonmehta with Wordpress, you can use an alternative writing space or even just import a text document if that makes it better.

@starrwulfe Thanks. How I do import a text document when on any paid WordPress.com plan?

@moonmehta there’s a few ways with plug ins; here’s one of them:

m.youtube.com/watch

@starrwulfe Thanks, but this one doesn’t work with Markdown files. Will look for one that does. Although my current thinking is if I must deal with Markdown anyway instead of the preferred RichText, I might as well use Micro.blog instead of WordPress.

@moonmehta there’s parsers for markdown as well. Not sure about richtext though. Just search the plugin section and tons pop up.

Personally I’m using Ulysses with both systems that works with markdown.

@starrwulfe Great, thank you.

@manton I found your post on the forum about how subscriber import works that might be good to add on that page. And, is there an option to send emails from a specific category on a weekly basis rather than monthly?

@manton So I tried importing Substack posts via the dedicated import feature but Micro.blog didn’t replace the Substack images on the imported posts with the copied images from the hosted blog here.

@moonmehta So looking into this, it appears that it did replace the img tags so it’s referencing the new hosted image when showing the image, but the link when clicking on the image is still pointed to Substack. Will see if I can fix this.

@manton Oh, interesting problem! Thanks for looking into it.

@moonmehta Do you mind emailing me your Substack export file to help@micro.blog? Hopefully I can adapt the import to handle those image links.

@manton Sure thing. Sent it.