For people who want a simple, elegant blogging platform that doesn’t require them to sell their souls or become wasted apparitions of what they once were – Ghost might be for you. (Just kidding with the deathly references there.)
What is Ghost All About?
John O’Nolan – a designer, world-class developer and a former head of WordPress’s UX team, developed ghost in 2012.
The concept was for an elegant, simple, original blogging platform that allowed users to create everything from blogs to weekly newspapers. He called the platform Ghost and it quickly made ripples across the WordPress community and the web at large.
The platform was touted as a “WordPress Killer” and, in the months following the development of the idea, O’Nolan and his team took to Kickstarter to make it a reality. The campaign raised upwards of $250,000 and the platform was born. Although the buzz over the new platform had begun to die out during its development, Ghost began to rock the boat once more when people began calling it things like “the new direction of blogging” and “the first exciting thing to happen to blogging in years.”
Although those were large shoes to fill, Ghost seems to have done it in many ways. When O’Nolan developed the concept for Ghost, the idea was to provide users with a user-friendly interface that, unlike WordPress, focused on blogging as a priority. Like many, O’Nolan was frustrated by clunky blogging platforms filled with difficult-to-use widgets that weren’t exactly applicable to the everyday blogger so, he decided to change the tides.
Although WordPress is currently the largest blog provider on the web, it’s not difficult to imagine that changing in the near future. It bears mentioning that, of the $250K that O’Nolan raised during his Kickstarter campaign, a large portion of that was provided by frustrated former WordPress users. So, supposedly, this is where Ghost comes in – to fill some pretty big shoes, I must say.
Testing The Ghost Out: The Pros and Cons
To test this new “blogging platform” out, I set up an account. It took me roughly all of 10 seconds. Enter username, password, email. I picked a name for my blog, and it showed me the URL I would have: copywriting.ghost.io . But, as soon as I got to my dashboard, I saw a big “Trial Account – Upgrade Now”.
As it turns out, the free Ghost platform is very limited. As a free user, you technically have no active subscription through the service. You can, however, download the Ghost software and install it to your own web server without passing over any cash. This requires you to manage all of your own codes and updates, although you do have access to the community support discussions in the Ghost forums, in case you get confused managing it all on your own.
If you want a little less DIY and a little more built-in convenience, however, you can upgrade to Ghost Pro, which offer a variety of different account options. The “Personal” account, for example, is $10 a month and offers hosting for one blog and up to 25,000 views each month. The “Advanced” plan is $30 a month and provides hosting for three blogs and up to 100,000 views a month. From there it goes to the “Team” plan ($100 per month, 10 blogs and 350,000 views a month) and “Business” ($250 each month, unlimited blogs and a million views a month).
Obviously, Ghost is unlike many other blogging platforms that don’t charge for their services and, as such, many bloggers are wondering what the heck Ghost is charging for. The answer, it turns out, is a little complex. Depending upon which version of Ghost Pro you update to, you’re paying for unlimited storage and transfer options, automatic updates and content backups, unlimited theme and app choices, security protection or priority support and migration options, although the latter two are only available on Ghost Pro’s two most expensive options – “Team” and “Business.”
In the future, Ghost Pro plans to offer perks like 3rd party apps, analytics and tools for developers to its paying users. Although the platform offers blogger-focused facilities, it also makes would-be bloggers jump through quite a few hoops to gain access to the same services that other blogging platforms offer for free.
The Pros of Ghost
1. Ghost Is Only For Blogging. (This could be a pro, or not.) The most obvious difference between Ghost and WordPress is that Ghost is dedicated only to blogging. No web operating systems, no CMS….just blogging. In addition, Ghost uses an MIT open source license, which, in their words “Our mission is to create the best open source tools for independent journalists and writers across the world, and have a real impact on the future of online media.” WordPress, on the other hand, uses a GNU open-source license. This license has caused some friction within the WordPress community and as a general rule, people don’t like it.
2. Ghost Is Set In Simpler Code. Another difference between WordPress and Ghost is that WordPress was written in PHP. While many tout this coding language as being a great one to use for hacking or prototyping, it’s difficult to use on a blogging platform due to it’s propensity toward change and copious semantic errors. Because O’Nolan had been involved with WordPress, he understood this frustration and set out to make Ghost different, which he did by writing the site in Node.js.
3. UX Is Different Than Wordpress. When it comes to user experience, there are some unique differences between Ghost and WordPress. While WordPress’s admin center can be excessively difficult for new users, advanced users love it and tout it as being a great platform to develop high-level blogs and websites. Ghost, on the other hand, sought to remove the bells and whistles and incorporate important blogging functions like social sharing and SEO into the core of the blogging platform. This means that users of Ghost have total control over content creation but may not have as much control over SEO and social sharing as WordPress users. Ghost may also make the actual act of creating content a bit easier for users. By offering a split-screen format, Ghost offers a seamless writing experience that, once more, places the focus back on blogging.
The Verdict: Ghost vs. WordPress
In the end, both platforms have their definitive strengths and weaknesses. Although Ghost touts itself as being a platform dedicated specifically to blogging, it’s obvious that it isn’t as built-in and convenient as it would have new users believe. In order to access important site features, like analytics and additional blog options, users need to pay the price. This, however, is not true for other blogging platforms such as WordPress. Although writers have the option to upgrade to WordPress.org hosting if they want more freedom, it’s not required to use the platform. That being said, it seems like users who want a simplified blogging experience may not opt for Ghost after all.
And, most importantly, Ghost makes users pay for the things may other sites offer for free. So the platform doesn’t seem to focus on “freedom to blog” nearly as much as it would claim. All in all, I don’t see it growing hugely unless it focuses on offering more value at lower or no costs—if it wants to rival Wordpress or the like.