Ghost Blogging Platform
Ghost is a powerful yet simple publishing platform that allows users to share their stories. It is an open-source blogging platform developed by John O’Nolan. It is currently owned and maintained by the Ghost Foundation and its community and the code is stored on GitHub.
Because Ghost is open-source, you can download and use it for free. But it has an accompanying hosting service, which is optional. You can pay the price for hosting your blog through the company. You can also find themes from third-party services. Many offer free themes, but others have paid themes such as Envato, MarketPress, and WooThemes.
Technical Aspects of Ghost
Ghost has been coded in Node.js. Node is a server-side JavaScript framework. It has a simple UI and provides a reporting dashboard. Users can edit their blog posts through a split screen display.
Main Features of Ghost
Some of the main features of Ghost are as following:
- Ghost allows you to build elegant, independent blogs. You can create an individual blog or your own newspaper. It is possible to create custom blogs based on your specific requirements, business niche or brand.
- The Ghost blogging platform is unique in that it allows you to invite your team and collaborate with everyone. You can create a multi-user blog and as others to contribute. This strategy could be quite useful if you want to allow your team members to write about their specific fields of specializations.
- Ghost is a blog that allows you to write faster and better. It has a split-screen editor that allows you to view the preview on the right. The Markdown syntax is on the left side of the window. You can both type and format and view the result doing so – something which is difficult to find in the existing blogging systems.
- Ghost allows you to manage all content archive instantly and easily. You can browse through the content similar to the way you browse through email. It gives you total control over the task.
The Ghost Blogging Platform is also easy for developers to work around. If the config.js file says developers need not edit below a line, you will not have to make any changes below the line. This blogging platform is simple but rich of features. Many of them are not to be found in traditional blogging platforms. It is free for signup and you can test it before using.
What I like is how easy it was to set up and get going. Also, hosting your site on their servers is fairly inexpensive. $10 per month gets you 50000 pageviews, which is a lot. By the time you reach that threshold, $10 should be easy to make. There are also a lot of stylish free themes available, too. I was able to set this up, install a theme, and write my 1st post in 10 minutes. The screenshot is shown above, and you can see the live site here.
What do you think about the Ghost blogging platform? Is it an alternative to WordPress you’d be willing to try? I definitely like it! I’d love to hear what you have to say about it in the comments section below.