Why I miss the older 2022 Substack interface

Plus: Thoughts on Twitter, and Preview of a coming post

Dear Readers,

this is going to be an uncharacteristically short post, where I mostly preview some stuff I’ve been working on that is going to come later.

---

Part 1: Little Things

So, first off, I want to mention that I’ve successfully completed a guest post for another Substack that I believe should come out later this week, likely on Thursday. Whenever it happens, please expect to see an email cross-post of the article in your inbox. This is going to be a substantial post (what I like to internally refer to as a ‘tentpole’) of about 5,000 words and I believe will likely be very interesting for those of you who like to watch television and/or read Tolkien.

I have a number of other posts that are in various states of completion and should appear throughout the month on Tuesdays, which I’m intending to be the regular publication day going forward. But I also hope to possibly do another guest post every once in a while, and those might come out on a different day than I usually publish. 

Next, I want to talk about something funny I realized about Twitter/X. 

You might’ve heard that Twitter had earlier in 2023 started blocking Substack article links. If I recall correctly, early on, links were blocked outright. Now, however, it’s more that the articles don’t get embedded links (with a social media featured preview image). This is why, as I understand it, one reason Substack started generating its own preview images for posts when they are completed.

Well, I’ve just discovered that apparently a Substack article actually shows up as any other linked article on Twitter as long as you have a custom domain. I don’t know how well publicized or well known this fact is, but I have confirmed it with some other writers, and it was a real surprise to me.

Basically, as long as the term ‘substack.com’ doesn’t show up in your publication’s address, your articles qualify for the now-standard (though admittedly downgraded) Twitter/X external link embedding preview image. So, if you are a Substack author on the fence about switching to a custom domain, this might be a good reason to. 

I personally am not going to, as I don’t really want to deal with the hassles of maintaining a custom domain and I don’t think I’m ever going to get a huge Twitter following. I sadly missed out on the days when Twitter was truly accessible (pre-enshittification) and its algorithms actually worked in your favor, allowing you to build a following that would actually receive your tweets.

---

Empire of the Tiny Onion circa 2022 vs. present. Credit: James Tynion IV.

Part 2: Layout Issues

Finally, I want to summarize some frustrations I’ve had with Substack’s interface changes that have solidified in the past week. See, back in May 2023, the platform introduced an interface change that allowed for new layouts for publications. This created somewhat more flexibility in designing your publication’s homepage. But I also feel it was a step down quality-wise from what Substack pages used to be.

I liked the overall page design/interface that was there at the beginning of 2022, where you could have your posts appear like a magazine but nothing was substantially different from what came before. The images remained the same size and shape. Meanwhile, each post had some basic stats always appearing next to it, such as the number of likes and comments.

In the new standard layout, the stats vanished. Yes, they would re-appear if you highlighted a given post with the cursor but they would otherwise be gone. This meant that neither the owner nor the visitor any longer would have a shorthand for how well a given page was doing, or how popular it was.

For a comparison, see the preceding two images of the homepage from James Tynion IV’s

The Empire of the Tiny Onion

. I used them as this was the only Substack, the 2022 front page image of which I could find. I don’t have one of my own, sadly.

I really wanted the stats back. I complained about that to Substack. And if I recall correctly, they did bring back permanent stats for a little bit. But then they removed them again. For me though, the bigger damage was done to the images.

I had previously learned to tailor my screencaps to the Substack standard, making them perfect for appearing both on the platform itself and as embedded links elsewhere. This was especially the case with my “SERIALS” section, where I used images to both list the name of a given TV show’s episode and a Grade of it. 

Here’s an excerpt from my complaint from Notes on May 26:

So, I’m pretty sure Substack covertly rearranged the individual newsletter section menus, which kinda sucks. For one thing, these submenus no longer show the ‘stats‘ (eg. likes, comments, etc.) on the page and the images have now been resized in a way that throws off their formatting (left image). Look, Substack Writers , I specifically tailored my images towards the squarish shape that used to be standard, esp. so that they could have a standard text layout over the image. For instance, my episodic TV reviews have episode names and Grades, which are now cut off by the new format….

And here’s a couple of screencaps to illustrate how different the two formats look:

Classic format, available until Jan 2024 via tag pages.

Current section and tag format. Existing images are resized and parts are cut off.

As my letter points out, I discovered that one way to work around this was to use TAGS to re-list my episodic reviews. So, I created new tag pages for them and essentially re-created the classic Section Menus. And all was well.

Until about last week, when I discovered that Substack had now changed up the TAG menu format as well, making my effort for naught.*

*Speaking of which, I recommend using tags. They’re great. 

Here’s an excerpt from my Note on January 2:

“I should’ve figured it wouldn’t last forever…. I thought I’d found a workaround by using the TAG feature to arrange my posts as opposed to the ‘section‘ feature. Tagged posts were appearing on pages in the classic format, with classic image dimensions and full stats (likes, comments, etc.). Today, I discovered that Substack changed the Tagged Pages to display in the SAME format as the Sections. Again, my Episodic Review Posts suffer.”

As you can imagine, I was pretty unhappy there for a little bit. But then I thought about it and realized that the constraints could actually foster my creativity. So, I decided to take this up as another challenge and started working on my own custom menu page for the episodic reviews. It ain’t gonna be perfect but it will be better than the alternative, imo. I have finished my episodic review image template and will be uploading the new menu pages some time over the course of this month.

What follows is a sample of what a graded review preview image should look like.* 

*Substack sadly doesn’t let you add hyperlinks to images themselves. But thankfully the captions are not restricted. EDIT: As it turned out, I was wrong, you CAN hyperlink images by highlighting them and clicking the “Link” icon in the upper toolbar of the post. This is simply not very evident. Doing this, I created an index of my TSCC reviews.

Click on the image above to go to its corresponding review.

Do I wish that Substack hadn’t done this? Yes, I do. Honestly, I feel the platform changes its interface a bit too much and is maybe a little too concerned with staying ‘up-to-date’ with the latest in phone and app design trends. I don’t think this is good for the writers, who get used to working within the parameters of the interface, only to get the rug pulled out of them. It happens way too quickly.

But at this point, I can only adapt and roll with the punches. Just hoping the current interface stays stable for a little while. 

---