# Why I Moved Off Dev.to

Original: https://swyx.io/why-i-moved-off-devto
Published: 2022-06-01

> 2 years ago I moved all my blogging to Dev.to. Today my main blog is on Github Issues and I've just launched DXTips on Hashnode.

2 years ago I [moved all my blogging to Dev.to](https://www.swyx.io/devto-cms). Today [my main blog is on Github Issues](https://www.swyx.io/github-cms) and [I've just launched DXTips on Hashnode](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1531330889535602688).

Dev.to still has the widest readership, which is great for beginners. But the experience has stagnated since [the big move to Forem](https://dev.to/devteam/announcing-forem-dev-5b38) (which it now actively promotes via a popup on mobile).

![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/173092767-19c7b2f3-4979-4f2d-85a3-6ac425f427ae.png)


## Dated UI

The brutalist design of Dev.to was appealing in 2017-2020, but now feels a little dated. It has received no updates and I felt like I wanted to see if I could offer my readers something better.

![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/173091427-01bb68af-7e21-4ce7-a66b-24de3c1dc992.png)

## No editor UX

The editor is just raw markdown in a text box, and though I like markdown, I like the niceties of using keyboard shortcuts to add links or bold/italicize text. Also paste-to-unfurl would be nice, but the shortcode syntax required too much customization when I should simply be able to paste in a url (this would also degrade more gracefully)

![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/173091794-e261d69a-82b8-4adc-889d-ce4c21d82695.png)

## Weird limitations on posting

![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/171433520-d1be59da-cf8b-4179-8416-cc84fe715299.png)

![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/171433743-e59c37cd-0b31-443a-b15d-5b28dbb2edd1.png)


## Neutral: performance?

dev.to is famously notable for their speed so i tossed it into pagespeed insights and was surprised to find a bad score. its probably because of the media heavy nature of the blogpost i picked so not a big deal

![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/173092309-893dbe51-3071-4c2c-9671-f7726050a1f9.png)

![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/173092502-f3637846-cf22-49fb-a548-8c991d86fa5a.png)

However, [webpagetest](https://www.webpagetest.org/result/220610_AiDc8D_9RC/) complained a lot less

![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6764957/173092685-f2196106-fa31-4dfa-86aa-cf3b35150856.png)

my swyxkit-based mirror page showed marginally better performance, with the js weight hurting because of the youtube embed.