I just followed some feeds on dev.to and feel like I want a note-taking place where I could rewrite what I learned in my own words and summarize a bit and that is easy to use.

I found Hashnode and this is exactly what I want.

No setup is required for the RSS feed of my posts.

I discovered that I can automatically post to dev.to using my RSS feed. After creating my dev.to account, I found the extension menu in the settings, and the "Publishing to DEV Community from RSS" is a nice feature. Hashnode automatically generates an RSS feed for my blog, which you can find at https://<your blog url>/rss.xml. Just register to dev.to with this RSS feed URL. That’s it.

Just be careful about one thing. On dev.to, it is saved as a draft, which means it has not yet been posted to dev.to. I got stuck here. It seems like many people get stuck on this too. You need to go to the dev.to dashboard, open the edit screen, and change publish: false at the top, which is surrounded by -, to true and save it to post it for the first time.

I’m sharing this URL because this article explains with great clearly. The easy-to-follow steps and some screenshots made it easy to understand for someone like me who is an absolute beginner of Hashnode and dev.to.

https://blog.seancoughlin.me/how-to-repost-hashnode-articles-on-devto

My writing is under my control

Hashnode offers a backup feature to a GitHub repository. It's easy to use. You create a new repository for the Hashnode backup and find the “GitHub” menu in your blog dashboard. Just click the backup button and connect it with the repository you created. The official Doc says you’ll find the “backup” menu on the dashboard, but it seems the old guide.

Custom Domain

I’m still undecided about purchasing my domain though, Hashnode allows you to add a custom domain, and this feature is available even on the free plan.

Wrap up

Actually, I haven’t compared it with the other services. I quickly found Hashnode is apparently easy to use and has features that I like.