Substack issues & questions

Suggestions on how to make Substack smooth and cool

This is a post about Substack. It is not about understanding or saving the world, it is just about making the platform working better for all of us. You will not get wiser reading it, but you may find several points that may resonate with your experience. By next week I will be back to my typical subjects.

I am writing this post as a static page to be regularly updated as issues are resolved and new ones are identified. I want to use this page as a work in progress adding new questions, solutions and workarounds to each of the problems identified.

I am only doing it because such list does not exist. I wish Substack would do it so that I could just add my own questions, ideas and suggestions to it. I do not take pleasure in doing this, but it should be done.
In this following list, every bullet point is a support question.

General questions:

When can we have a wish list where we can vote on desired features?

When can we have a list of all reported problems with regularly updated status?

Onboarding and import/export/insert

As I mentioned in my previous post, my import from Wordpress gave me quite a bit of work that I am not even close to have finished.
I lost all my comments, tags & categories, internal references and half of my formatting.
The most annoying is the loss of formatting. Some imported posts are fine, some lost all paragraph breaks. I have to manually edit about 300 posts, 15-20 minutes each
For me, it is crying over spilt milk, but for the sake of future migrants:

• Is there a more reliable importer being worked on?

I regularly use references to my prior posts. The imported site is full of references to my posts on the old one, because it was not smart enough to change something like this:
http://zorkhun.com/wp/2014/08/18/a-pinch-of-communism/
to this:
https://zorkthehun.substack.com/p/a-pinch-of-communism

• Are there any tools I can use to do a site-wide search & replace or at least just ‘find’ strings in hyperlinks so that I can change them manually?

I write in MS Word, then I copy & paste into the Substack editor. It wouldn’t be fair to complain about missing features, they are different editors after all, but when a feature that is available in both is lost in the process, that is a problem.
I have the tendency to use bullet points. When I will put this post up, I will have to edit every single one of them

·       This is how it imports,

• This is how it looks once fixed

I would not expect an HTML editor offer the same as a dedicated word processor, but I would appreciate a lot more than there is today and I would most definitely expect the supposedly available features to work properly.

Site and navigation

I have to say it again, I am coming from Wordpress.
It needed a plugin for it, but I was able to set a pair of links to take me to the next or previous post.
I was able to place it either or both on the top and the bottom of the post. It also displayed the title of the post. I do not care about this last feature (title display), but the way I used the feature the most is to go through posts using the links on the top of the page.
Now, that I have to do an inordinate amount of paging through my poorly imported posts, I would need that feature a lot.
Substack has the option, but in a very limited way, with just two buttons: previous – next, ONLY at the end of the post. Just to make it more annoying, I cannot just jump to the bottom of the page to find them, as they are not there, but at the end of the post, before comments and a list of my previous post.

• Can we have previous – next links either or both at the beginning and the end of the post?

I DO NOT want an automatically generated list of my posts display at the end of every post. I want to select manually whatever I consider relevant whenever I find it appropriate.  Quite possibly in the format that is no longer available. (see illustration below.)

• How can I turn off the automatically generated list of my recent posts from the end of every post?

The button I miss the most is the ‘read more’  or ‘continue…’ button.
I would want all of my readers to read my posts either in the app or on the web.
It is a constant problem that people from my imported list comment to me in personal emails, as they have no reason to sign up to Substack to read it. One would think that it is in Substack’s interest to nudge people toward reading on the web or in the app. The posts look much better on the web than in an email.
So the question is: WHY NOT? All I can do now, is to restrict reading to subscribers.

My subscribers would have a better experience, I would get better statistics and Substack would get more readers. It could even be combined with the paywall button.

• Can we have a read more button to send readers to either the web-site or the app?

Editor improvements

Let me start with one of my recent annoyances. I asked a fellow writer how can I insert the kind of visual links she has in her posts. She replied, I tried and I loved it. Especially the fact that I can choose between three sizes. I would most likely use the smallest one as I do not want a large visual distraction from the body of my post. This is what the medium and the small one look like:

As I said, I was happy. Two days later the options disappeared. The only one I can insert now is the large one, which I would hardly ever use for the reason stated above.

• Can we have the post-link sizing options back?

Update on 2024-02-16: I learned that the above problem was my misunderstanding. The sizing option didn’t disappear, it was never really there, meaning it was and is ONLY available for my own posts. If I wish to link to another Substacker’s work, I can only do it in one size. If I don’t like it, I can only do hyperlink. I simply don’t like the medium and large sizes, as they take too much visual attention away from the post.

The Substack editor leaves me with a lot to desire:

• Indented paragraphs (Block quote is the only option at the present)

• Centered paragraphs

• Tables

• Text flowing around pictures

• Highlighting

I could write a longer list; these are just the important ones. The workaround used by most people is to take a screenshot when they do not have what they need.

Subscriber communication and management

I would love to be able to segment my subscribers based on custom criteria, meaning set by me.
For example, I would want to send this post, only to those who have a publication themselves.
Or have blue eyes and a birthday in November

• Could we add custom criteria to sectioning?

Notes & chat

I am still completely confused about chats and notes. I found an explanation explaining the differences that kind of made sense, but only until I tried in practice. 

It is just not clear to me what the idea behind it is. Wanting to be like twitter/X but different is a little confusing and definitely not enough. I could see using it to share short thoughts and links from both within Substack and any other source like I do on twitter or FB – both of which I would happily drop for a better alternative. I just don’t get the difference in the function.

• Could we possibly disambiguate (or converge) Chat and Notes?

What I would expect from Substack is something more serious and with some options to personalize.
Options to set profiles on what to show and how.

Setting defaults such as:
- show posts and comments in reverse order from everyone I follow for the past four days.
- Show comments from all my paid subscribers in latest-first order with no time limit.
- etc.

I like to focus on ideas and exchanges instead of the personalities.
I would like to see threaded discussions with a subject line instead of just the name of the person who started it.

But these are just preference. The only problem I have is the disconnect between the email notification and the site.

• Can we introduce a subject-line requirement to notes and chats?

• Can we set our own defaults in viewing Chat & Notes?

• Can we have an at least minimal editor in all of: Chats, Notes and comments?

• Could we have the chat like ‘reactions’ in all three?

• Could we have a unified interface in all three?

I want to be able to express my dislike or disagreement sometime.

Technical support  

I spent a good chunk of my life providing technical support.
I would like to see transparent support.

• A searchable KB of solved and known issues.

• Clear communication on updates, fixes and new features.

As I said on the top of this post, I would like to keep this post alive until I can see a reasonable replacement of it by Substack. To make that easier, I will list here all the questions and ask you to vote on them or describe in the comments the problems/questions/wishes I missed. I will add them to the list.

The Substack editor could use some more features:

Indented paragraphs (Block quote is the only option at the present)
Centered paragraphs
Tables
Text flowing around pictures
Highlighting
A little more ‘rich’ editor
(etc.)

Please comment! I want to find out what I missed.
Also share this widely. The more we can articulate our needs, the more likely it is that we will get the improvements we actually need.

Updates

2023-12-14

Drop-down menus

I write about a fair number of subjects. I would like to collect them into sets using tags.
I have far more than what could fit on the menu bar.
The options offered by Substack make my homepage very busy and confusing.
All I would need is a drop-down menu where I could list all the tags I care to list.
Selecting the tags from the drop-down menu should generate a page with all posts with that tag.
I would like to post more than one post under the About heading.

• Could we have multi-level drop down headings? (even one would make me happy)

Search cannot find cross-posted articles

I wrote a guest-post on a specific theme. Once it was posted, I cross-posted it back to my Substack.
It shows up in my history just fine, but when I search for it, it is as if it never existed.
I discovered that the title was changed to a number: https://zorkthehun.substack.com/cp/139134864
Since it is a cross-post, I cannot change it. Still, search should be able to find it through the title.

• Can I fix this without reposting it as my own?

Accessing saved posts

What do you do when you have a question, you find the answer and the answer is just STUPID?
I discovered a while ago the ‘save’ button on the control menu on the top of each post.
( I wish I could show it to you, but Sustack does not allow me to insert here a little screenshot)
I would us this feature when I want to save something for future reference or just future reading when I have more time.
After saving a few I started wondering where can I find them. Eventually, I discovered that you have to pretend that you want to save something to open a menu in a previously unsaved post to find next to the save button a ‘view’ option.
It works, but it is also spectacularly stupid.

• Can we fix this with a ‘saved posts’ link in a little more prominent and general position?