Moving my blog from Svbtle to Substack

I was an early user on Svbtle back when I saw a “Show HN” thread about it on HackerNews.

I love the minimal design. I love how it works really well on mobile. I dig the draft preview URLs. I think the composer makes it super easy to write without distractions. I’ve had no complaints about it for the past 4 years. It does what every blogging platform should do, without any-frills.

The main reason I’m moving on is: SSL. Chrome will show a privacy error when users visit my custom blog domain because Svbtle doesn’t use custom domain SSL certs. Custom domain certs have been a private beta feature for more than a year now. I’ve written to the Svbtle team asking them to give me access, but have gotten no response from them. On Chrome (and any browser using a “Force HTTPS” extension) this makes my blog totally unusable. Having custom domain certs for paying customers should have been treated as an urgent high priority item. It should have been on by default for all users.

Anyways, I’m sad to move on from this platform, but excited for a fresh start on a new platform. Hopefully you’ll subscribe → blog.shahzeb.co !