

Ghost: Just a Blogging Platform - skattyadz
http://tryghost.org/features.html

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johnonolan
I apologise for the confusion guys, this site wasn't really intended with you
in mind as the target audience. I believe there was another direct link to the
Kickstarter campaign which would have been more appropriate for HN. The
marketing site is simply a "pretty thing" to attract some interest from
consumers / casual users. Not intended as full demonstration or marketed at
developers. I'll post myself when there's something you guys will actually be
interested in (aka a GitHub link with a public repo in it).

And yes "impatient in Manhatten" - that can be arranged, bro.

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jmduke
The domain 'tryghost' is something of a misnomer: this is a Kickstarter
project.

[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnonolan/ghost-
just-a-...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnonolan/ghost-just-a-
blogging-platform)

~~~
rrouse
Yeah. The "Ready? Try Ghost" button at the end is just an ad for their
kickstarter project.

They should have just stated what it was up front.

~~~
spolu
Yep not cool

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sergiotapia
This project doesn't exist. It's just a bait for the kickstarter page. Kind of
bummed out, the features looked nice and I wanted to try it out.

Perhaps a mod can change the title to 'Kickstarter: Ghost - Just a Blogging
Platform'.

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filmgirlcw
I really, really like this. The decision to use Kickstarter might upset some,
but I think it's a pragmatic way of ensuring that talent can focus on it to
actually deliver a project to users.

Still, I really hope to see a lot of activity pop-up on GitHub. Community is a
bug reason WordPress won over everyone else and while I'm a big fan of
opinionated software leadership, I also hope to see more people bring their
ideas to the table.

This is a niche for sure, but a niche I happily backed, in part because this
looks like something I would really like to use.

The decision to use Node is interesting. Another reason WordPress was so
successful is because basically anyone with shared hosting could install it
without having to use anything more than an FTP client (and now basically
every host has a 1-click install). I'm curious as to the impact this might
have on adoption beyond the hosted platform for its targeted user base.

Regardless, I backed and I hope to see this sort of thing succeed, if only
because we need more stuff like this in the wild.

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mwill
(I hope this doesn't sound like I'm being negative, I'm just thinking out
loud)

The video specifically mentions being targeted at users, not developers and
taking a look at the kickstarter page, this feels less like an open source
project and more like a startup that plans to open source it's core software.

There's certainly a focus on selling it as a complete, ready to go package,
tightly wrapped and best served with their hosting service, with the people
living inside the ecosystem (Users, themers, etc) being the first class
citizen here. It almost feels closer to Tumblr (minus social) than Wordpress.

Even the "How does it work?" section seems to be written for someone who will
build themes and plugins, specifically mentioning what the MIT licence means
for theme developers.

I'm really interested to see how this plays out, and if successful what the
community will look like. It feels like a pretty unique setup. Or maybe I'm
reading into it too much. : )

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EwanToo
I think it's rather sad when a project says they're open source, then says
things like :

"You'll need hosting for your blog no matter what, but our service will be the
most powerful way of running Ghost - and the easiest to get started with.
You'll have the full Ghost software with all bells, whistles, themes, plugins,
and some extras that are only available with us (like automatic updates and
backups)."

So they won't be open sourcing it then if they're planning on not allowing
people to add these features to the main code base?

~~~
Orva
"Ghost is an Open Source application", tiny github image link in footer and
organization has no public repositories.. (<https://github.com/tryghost>)

~~~
mwill
No repo's because it's not released yet, it's a kickstarter.

re: tiny github image link, the video does specifically mention it's a project
targeted at users, not developers, so I guess having things like that as a
footnote make sense. Can't comment on how this strategy will work out, guess
we'll see.

~~~
Orva
Yeah, it took quite long to notice that it was kickstarter ad. Although there
is something done if you believe actual kickstarter page.

Also, whole point of first paragraph in the site is to promote that app is
open source and what benefits it brings to the users. So using open source for
marketing and then kind of hiding actual source.. not nice.

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tommoor
I would be much more willing to pledge towards this if the current state of
their code was available to see / install.

~~~
niggler
That would require the person doing the kickstarter to commit time to the
project. I get the impression from most of these software-development
kickstarters that the goal is to get payment in advance of the dev work.

~~~
addandsubtract
Isn't that what raising VC money is all about? What's wrong with raising money
for something you're going to spend several months on?

~~~
niggler
It goes against the original spirit of kickstarter.

Although it was targeted towards hardware products, I think similar guidelines
should be in place for software: <http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-
is-not-a-store>

"Product simulations are prohibited. Projects cannot simulate events to
demonstrate what a product might do in the future. Products can only be shown
performing actions that they’re able to perform in their current state of
development."

And this makes sense in light of true software development: 10% of the time is
spent building the rough prototype and 90% of the time is spent refining. And
oftentimes the development money is useful for the tedium like tests and
validation,.

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joemaller1
I'm looking for something like this, but there is no this here. "Try it"
should go to Github, not Kickstarter.

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tryjottit
Hasn't Aaron Swartz's <http://www.jottit.com> solved this problem for years
now?

Go ahead - type in some markdown, then edit the page. You'll be presented with
a two-pane view. Your markdown is rendered dynamically. When you're done, just
choose the access level for the page (public/private) and you're good to go.

~~~
cmwelsh
The SSL certificate on that website is broken. It's unusable in Chrome.

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russelluresti
I like the idea of an easy-to-use blogging platform, but I'm not completely
sold on the use of markdown.

I'd rather see another syntax language that allowed me a few more controls,
like the ability to add classes to elements in case I wanted to switch up
styles a bit (maybe I don't want all blockquotes to look the same, or all
lists, etc).

~~~
marshallford
I agree. While I think markdown is really neat, but I hate having to mess with
paragraph tags when using css classes.

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MWil
Call me when it's ready...

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justastat
Roger that.

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zimbatm
It looks good and the execution seems to be well done. What I would really
like to see a blogging platform that has a different take on article creation
than textarea + publishing.

Blog publishing is also about research, collecting the content and iterating
on the article's content until one feels satisfied with the result.

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justastat
The UI seems to have taken a page from <http://mouapp.com/>

~~~
emehrkay
Do you think that it does a roundtrip to the server to get the preview or is
it all done in JS?

~~~
dkuntz2
I would hope it's done in JavaScript. And, based on the image uploading stuff,
(you type something like `!image` and the preview adds in a drag-n-drop spot
for an image), it looks like it.

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byamit
If you're going to be a non-profit, wouldn't it be better to establish the
non-profit and then do a fundraising drive? Assuming it's a tax-deductible
non-profit, you have an additional benefit to the donation.

Best of luck with the project!

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walt74
Their own Blog has no RSS-Feed. I'm not convinced. Looks good, though.

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NelsonMinar
I hope <http://blog.tryghost.org/> isn't intended as a demo. It's only a
single article, no permalinks, no archives, no RSS/Atom feed.

~~~
AndreasFrom
But it certainly loads quickly.

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bricestacey
Button at bottom opens a modal that I can't scroll on an iPhone 5.

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epaga
The simplicity and markdown support reminds me a lot of <http://throwww.com/>
which is very impressive.

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cmwelsh
There's a broken link on the question mark above the CodeMirror widget. It
should link to the Markdown website but it links to a 404.

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niix
Looks like Medium.

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maxaf
Would it be possible to see the rest of that chest tattoo? I'm dying to know.

\- impatient in Manhattan

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33a
If they have latex support, I'd use it. Until then it's Wordpress for me.

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saejox
There is no code or sample site. Looks like a scam to me.

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TopazGuru
Try trilldy.com

