Why More Developers Are Leaving dev.to and Medium for Their Own Domain
For many developers, platforms like dev.to and Medium have served as a comfortable digital home for years — sometimes even a decade or more. They offer built-in audiences, zero server configuration, and a frictionless publishing experience. But a growing number of experienced engineers are making a deliberate, thoughtful move away from these platforms and toward something they fully own: a personal portfolio site on a custom domain.
This is exactly the path that Brandon Weaver, a principal-level Ruby engineer known in the community for his distinctive "lemur-themed" programming talks and tutorials, has taken. After years of publishing on dev.to and Medium, he has begun migrating all of his content to baweaver.com, a personal site powered by Bridgetown and hosted via a GitHub repository at github.com/baweaver/portfolio. His story is a compelling case study in why content ownership, creative control, and long-term career visibility matter more than ever for developers who take their writing seriously.
The Core Reason: Control Over Your Own Content
The most fundamental reason Brandon cites for moving is simple: he wanted more control. When you publish on a third-party platform, you are always subject to that platform's rules, design decisions, algorithmic changes, and — ultimately — its continued existence. Medium has changed its monetization and metering model multiple times. dev.to, while remaining developer-friendly, is still a platform you do not own.
Owning your content on a personal domain means you decide the layout, the typography, the navigation, and the reading experience. You are not locked into a platform's templates or constrained by its feature roadmap. Every internal link, every page, every article URL is yours permanently — not contingent on a company's business decisions.
There is also the matter of SEO. Articles published on a custom domain build your domain authority over time. When you publish on dev.to, you are building dev.to's domain authority, not your own. For a developer who has spent years producing high-quality technical content, that is a significant asymmetry worth correcting.
A Homepage That Had Not Been Updated Since 2014
Brandon also mentions something many developers will recognize with a wince: his personal homepage had not been meaningfully updated since 2014. This is surprisingly common. Developers spend enormous energy building things for others but often neglect their own digital presence. A stale personal site — or no personal site at all — sends an unintentional signal to potential employers, collaborators, and readers.
After years of attempting redesigns that never quite came together, Brandon finally landed on a design he was satisfied with, pulling the project across the finish line during vacation time. The new site embraces an aesthetic of architectural imagery, watercolor, and art deco — a deliberate departure from the clean but generic look of most developer blogs. This kind of distinct visual identity is something platform-hosted blogs simply cannot offer.
If your personal homepage still reflects who you were in 2014, Brandon's move is a timely reminder that your online portfolio is a living document of your professional identity — and it deserves the same care you give to your code.
Bridgetown: The Static Site Generator Behind the Move
The technical foundation of baweaver.com is Bridgetown, a Ruby-based static site generator that has gained a loyal following in the Ruby community. Bridgetown is inspired by Jekyll but offers a more modern, component-driven architecture with better support for Webpack, esbuild, and contemporary front-end workflows.
For a Ruby developer like Brandon, choosing Bridgetown is a natural fit — the configuration and templating feel familiar, the GitHub-based deployment pipeline is straightforward, and the output is a blazing-fast static site that performs well for both users and search engines. Static sites have excellent Core Web Vitals scores out of the box, which is a meaningful SEO advantage over heavier CMS-driven alternatives.
If you are a Ruby developer considering a personal site, Bridgetown is worth serious consideration. It removes much of the friction of setting up a modern static site while staying firmly within the Ruby ecosystem.
What Happens to the Lemurs?
Long-time followers of Brandon's work will know that his programming talks and tutorials have a beloved signature: lemur-themed illustrations that make complex Ruby concepts approachable and memorable. The new baweaver.com takes a more refined, architectural aesthetic — so where do the lemurs go?
The answer is that Brandon has something more ambitious in mind for them. His current vision is a dedicated interactive storybook experience, complete with inline Ruby REPLs, that would transform his major conference talks into progressive, animated, hands-on learning journeys. Rather than static slides or written articles, readers would be able to run code directly within the narrative, experiencing concepts as they unfold.
It is a genuinely exciting idea — one that blends the best of interactive coding environments like Jupyter notebooks with the storytelling structure of a children's book. Brandon is candid about the challenge: building it requires several layers of JavaScript expertise beyond where he currently sits, and it represents a significant amount of work. He has, however, already secured a custom domain for the project — a developer's version of committing to the bit.
A Decade of Growth, Archived and Accessible
Perhaps the most touching aspect of Brandon's migration is what he says about dev.to itself. For nearly a decade, that platform was his online home — the place where he documented his growth from senior engineer all the way to principal level. That body of work represents a career in motion, and he is understandably grateful for what the platform gave him.
Rather than abandoning that history, he is bringing it with him. All content from both Medium and dev.to will be consolidated at baweaver.com, and he plans to work backwards through even older posts over time to ensure everything remains accessible. This is good practice for any developer making a similar move: use canonical URL tags, set up proper redirects where possible, and think carefully about preserving the inbound links and search equity your old content has accumulated.
What You Can Learn From This Move
Whether you are a junior developer just starting to write or a staff engineer with years of published work, Brandon's decision carries a few practical lessons worth taking to heart.
- Own your content from the start. Publish on your own domain and optionally cross-post to platforms like dev.to using canonical tags. This way, you capture SEO value for yourself while still reaching platform audiences.
- Your personal site is a portfolio asset. Recruiters, clients, and collaborators Google you. A well-maintained, distinctive personal site communicates professionalism, taste, and commitment in ways a LinkedIn profile simply cannot.
- Pick tools that fit your stack. Brandon chose Bridgetown because he is a Ruby developer. You should choose a static site generator or CMS that aligns with your own expertise, making maintenance sustainable over the long term.
- Migrate content carefully. Preserve old URLs where possible, use redirects, and add canonical tags to any cross-posted versions to protect your search rankings during a migration.
- Design matters. A personal site with a clear visual identity and intentional aesthetic will always be more memorable than a generic blog template. Take the time to make it feel like you.
The Bigger Picture: Content Independence in 2024 and Beyond
Brandon Weaver's move from dev.to and Medium to baweaver.com is part of a broader, quiet shift happening across the developer community. As platforms evolve, consolidate, or change their terms, the developers who invested in their own domains and their own audiences find themselves in a far more resilient position. Your personal site cannot be acquired, shut down, or algorithmically deprioritized by a company whose incentives do not align with yours.
There has never been a better time to make the move. Static site generators are mature and developer-friendly. Hosting is cheap or free. Custom domains cost less than a coffee per month. And the long-term SEO and career benefits of owning your content compound year after year.
So if you have been meaning to set up your personal portfolio — or finally revamp the one you last touched in 2014 — let Brandon's move be the nudge you needed. Take the leap. Own your content. Build something that is truly, permanently yours.