
Introducing Ghost 2.0 - paukiatwee
https://blog.ghost.org/2-0/
======
johnonolan
Heyo, John from Ghost here. Thanks for the kind words so far about 2.0 — it’s
been a hectic few months! Earlier this year I talked about how we were
shifting focus from simplicity to power -
[https://blog.ghost.org/5/](https://blog.ghost.org/5/) \- and this is the
first big release since that move. Whereas early versions were extremely
opinionated and rigid, we’re now starting to bake in more flexibility and
configurability to allow for a more diverse set of use-cases.

Some fun technical details from this release:

\- New features require building a routing map for all possible URLs on boot,
which is a dramatically heavy operation. We were eventually forced to forgo
our traditional ORM layer entirely to get any degree of performance (insert:
shock/awe)

\- Related: It turns out SQLite3 has a query limit of 999 SQL variables, so we
had to implement a recursive query strategy for SQLite only. Wild. Default is
MySQL though, which was fine.

\- Conquered a pretty spectacular memory leak when running in development as a
result of trace-logging promises in Bluebird, which is “a full featured
promise library with unmatched performance” — …unless you implicitly enable
debug traces

Also: Let me be the first to say that I can’t believe there’s still no
Postgres support, which is absolutely outrageous.

On a serious note, thanks for all the support and there are several of us
hanging out in the comments if anyone has technical questions which they’re
curious about.

~~~
just_observing
"Also: Let me be the first to say that I can’t believe there’s still no
Postgres support, which is absolutely outrageous."

Postgres is open source.

Why do they owe you?

If it matters, write the code.

~~~
Vinnl
It's a joke, the context of which is that they removed Postgres support from
Ghost a while ago, and people keep complaining about it.

See: [https://blog.ghost.org/dropping-support-for-
postgresql/](https://blog.ghost.org/dropping-support-for-postgresql/)

~~~
fusiongyro
I have to give him credit, I was here to complain about it.

------
varunramesh
I would love to see an official static site mode for Ghost (and Wordpress).
That way we can get both a nice authoring experience and the low cost/security
of S3 hosting.

~~~
undseg
This is always the first thing I look for in the new version announcements for
big blogging platforms.

Would be amazing if I didn't need to know a completely separate technology
and/or hack together bridges/site "staticizers" in order to have a quite basic
functionality (the site be 100% static when no back-end dynamic interaction is
needed).

That said, there are third party plugins for WordPress that do this. Don't
know about ghost, but my hopes are for first-class support for this.

~~~
marc_io
Check out Publii, then (Open Source too). It's quite similar to WordPress in a
lot of ways, but it's a desktop app that uploads static files.
[https://github.com/GetPublii/Publii](https://github.com/GetPublii/Publii)

~~~
dpatriarche
Thanks for posting this recommendation, I've been looking for a static
blogging tool like this.

------
benfrain
I’m amazed no-one has mentioned the lack of a built-in commenting feature.

The makers of Ghost are here appreciating the benefits of comments but sadly
they haven’t made there way to Ghost yet.

I’d love to move to Ghost from Wordpress but commenting is essential.

And no. 3rd party Garbage like Disqus isn’t a viable option.

~~~
bovermyer
I'm curious as to why commenting is essential for you.

~~~
benfrain
The comments on a blog post are often as useful as the post itself. They are
also directly related to the content of the post. Why would I want that
information stored anywhere else but with the post itself? Especially with a
3rd party? To say conversation can be done with other services just seems like
passing the buck to me.

------
kup0
Any chance of a cheaper / more minimal plan for a small personal site or blog?

I suppose at that point, it's better for you for us to run it on our own
hosting, though...?

~~~
WesleyLivesay
That is what I am moving to. I currently use their hosting but plan on moving
to a DigitalOcean box soon.

~~~
wlesieutre
I remember when they launched with a $5/month hosting plan, then when they
raised it to $10. Just looked at the pricing page and the minimum is now
$36/month (or $29/month billed yearly). That's some serious sticker shock.

Is it _that_ much better than say, Squarespace?

~~~
WesleyLivesay
I am fortunate enough to be on the $10 plan, but given how little traffic my
site gets cutting it in half with the smallest DO box would still be nice.

~~~
wlesieutre
You could move from Ghost Pro to another Ghost provider without being
completely manual. A quick google turned up FastComet at $2.95/month. Page
claims 1-click Ghost installation, easy Ghost upgrade service, and
daily/weekly Ghost backups.

[https://www.fastcomet.com/ghost-hosting](https://www.fastcomet.com/ghost-
hosting)

Yay open source!

------
blfr
I was just thinking about ghost a few weeks ago! I used to use Ghost way back
when and wanted to get back to it but the installation process has become
really complex and brittle. I'm a little ashamed to admit that it beat me.

The cli tool is very rigid. For some reason you cannot simply run ghost as the
user ghost but you need some other user with sudo privileges to create the
ghost user during the installation process. And if there's any problem at any
point, it just breaks.

I will try the npm path[1] but it looks pretty arduous as well.

Is this a business decision to turn as many people as possible to the hosted
version? Or is this just the state of node and modern web apps?

[1] [https://docs.ghost.org/docs/using-ghost-as-an-npm-
module](https://docs.ghost.org/docs/using-ghost-as-an-npm-module)

~~~
axxl
Digital Ocean has a one click install that configured a ghost blog and takes
care of everything for you.

~~~
blfr
I'm so old I still have a multi-purpose personal server instead of separate
VPS/containers for everything.

~~~
CM30
Honestly, I suspect most people use either traditional hosting or a personal
server for their sites. The separate containers on VPS providers thing is
significantly overrepresented on sites like Hacker News, and likely counts for
why many scripts (not just Ghost) haven't quite cracked the mainstream yet.

------
ijongkim
Really looking forward to trying out Ghost 2.0

I help run a small publication with some friends and we've been having
difficulties with Medium and think it's time to move to a new platform.

One problem we haven't figured out a solution to yet is importing our Medium
articles into Ghost.

My current plan is to export the Medium articles, parse them, then insert them
directly into the Ghost DB. Is this is a viable solution?

I guess I have two questions: \- Is Medium import going to be a feature
offered any time soon? \- How does the SEO configuration/setting work? Is it
set up on article access? on article publish? on article creation? Would
inserting articles directly into the DB break this process?

Thanks!

~~~
johnonolan
We have no real way to do anything here, unfortunately. Medium deliberately
export a totally vague dump of HTML files which don't even contain publication
date and are essentially unintelligible. They also have no API to read from.
There might be a route to creating a scraper, but that comes with its own set
of challenges which are not insignificant and then potentially can also be
misused by people scraping content which is not their own. So it's a tricky
one.

IMO Medium should provide a real export format and not hold people hostage...
but you'd have to convince them of that

------
marcperel
I was a pretty early beta on the editor, and I'm happy to see the production
version turn out as good as it did.

Cards is a smart way to re-phrase the rich content without dipping into the
"site builder" mould.

Nice work.

------
dirtylowprofile
I updated to Ghost 2.0 last night and did not end well, though I managed to
fix it by going to a sunken place looking for ghost.service. Hopefully in the
next update it would be more stable.

Also, one more thing I would like Ghost to improve is there SEO. My website
hosted on DO is just 2-3 pages behind. Some of my posts don't even make it
even the obvious meta and title.

------
cyberferret
Nice. I've been using Ghost for our development blog for a few years now [0].
Every time I have to maintain our main company blog, which is Wordpress, I am
astounded by the incredibly messy and cluttered admin interface. Ghost just
keeps it simple and easy enough for me to publish quick dev updates on our
SaaS in seconds without having to wade through a ton of crud.

I wonder if the 1.x -> 2.0 upgrade will be a simple ghost-cli command, or
whether it will entail a complete reinstall on our Digital Ocean droplet?

[0] - [https://workplace.hrpartner.io](https://workplace.hrpartner.io)

------
truebosko
Very interesting! I've been debating if we want to continue using Sphinx
([http://www.sphinx-
doc.org/en/master/usage/restructuredtext/b...](http://www.sphinx-
doc.org/en/master/usage/restructuredtext/basics.html)) for our documentation
website, and focus on a tool that provides a more robust platform for
publishing a content focused site.

Sphinx is great for building out an API reference, but there's so much more to
a documentation website beyond that.

Anyone have insight into this idea?

~~~
therealmarv
Ghost is not the best bet for documentations. It's great in its area but not
for sphinx like documentation. Better look at mkdocs! If you want to see a
website we created from a Sphinx to mkdocs switch:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17717513](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17717513)

------
Yhippa
This is perfect timing for me. I'm interested in getting serious about
starting a technical blog. I've been deciding between Ghost and WordPress.
Does anyone have thoughts on that comparison?

~~~
arusahni
I know this isn't one of those two options, but I'd recommend a static site
generator (e.g., Lektor, Hugo, Nikola, Pelican, Octopress). I find myself
wasting less time twiddling and configuring them and instead focusing on
writing content (in Markdown or ReStructured Text, no less).

Additionally, I can then throw the content up on GitHub pages or AWS S3 and
cut down on hosting costs.

~~~
jamesgeck0
I switched to Ghost because I found I spent a lot of time twiddling with my
static site generator. My Jekyll setup had a habit of breaking every few
months.

~~~
derricgilling
Interesting to switch away from a static generator due to reliability. We used
Tumblr for our first start up since many non-technical folks were writing
content (It was a consumer app). We had a bad experience with it being slow
loading for users while being very constrained regarding the theming and
clunky editor.

Our current startup is much more dev focused (API analytics) so we went with
Jekyll and absolutely love it. Just code in Markdown and your favorite editor
and host on GH pages. It's free and super fast. No need to worry about theme
settings everything is version controlled. These days, even if you need
dynamic content like search, you can use Algolia or Lunr if the index is
small.

I guess once you hit a point where you have a large team writing and
scheduling content to be posted, static generators may not scale well
accordingly (and Ghost will prob be one of my first picks), but we love it for
smallish dev focused teams.

------
robhope
Refreshing to see focus on a better product and not a pivot into a website
builder of sorts. Congrats on the launch, looks solid!

------
johnchristopher
> Multi-Language Sites

> You can now configure your site to support multi-lingual content served
> across unique URLs with SEO-friendly, semantic templates. Now you can
> publish in English, German, Spanish or just about anything!

About damn fucking time, pardon my language. Was a real deal breaker for some
projects of mine.

~~~
johnonolan
Agreed

~~~
johnchristopher
While we are on the subject, what are the plans now for the admin interface ?
Community provided translation files ? Can the admin interface be translated ?

------
obahareth
I just upgraded my website with a click and some minimal theme changes using
Ghost Pro and I'm liking the new editing experience. It feels like a blend of
the nice features from Medium and Caramella.

------
actionowl
About a year to 6 months ago I decided I wanted to try out the hosted version
at ghost.org. It seemed I had already used up my free trial some time ago. So
long ago I don't even recall doing it. I emailed support to see if I could get
another trial. I was interested in paying for the pro version but wanted to
make sure it was actually worth $29.

I NEVER got a response from their support about my request. Just flat out
ignored. Haven't been back since...

~~~
erisds
I totally understand that you feel ignored, however I can assure you our
support team never ignores emails - so something must've gone wrong either
with the original email or our reply.

We're always happy to provide another free trial - or you can signup again
with an email address variation.

------
kstrauser
What's the API support like these days? Can I use MarsEdit to easily post? Are
there iOS apps for on-the-go thoughts?

------
KaoruAoiShiho
Can ghost be used as a headless CMS? Been looking for an open sourced one
based on nodejs

~~~
johnonolan
Yes it can, it's not a perfect experience (yet) but quite a lot of people are
already using it in this way. We're also generally interested in a more
decoupled approach to the front end, so you can expect this to improve further
in future!

------
monkeydust
How good is ghost for seo vs other platforms?

~~~
pmlnr
Seo is a theme thing, and it barely has anything to do with the engine.

~~~
johnonolan
Not strictly true, Ghost has a lot of built-in features for SEO. In
particular: Detailed schema.org microformats and structured data, automatic
canonical tags, automated + user override-able custom meta data, automatic XML
sitemaps, SEO friendly routes, RPC pings, automatic Google AMP support, and
quite a few other things.

We do all of these things in core, rather than leaving it up to the theme, so
that everyone gets consistently good SEO rather than being left up to the
mercy of whatever the theme developer remembered to implement

~~~
monkeydust
Thanks - are there examples you can point me to for commercial sites built
from Ghost that advertise products (through affiliate links)?

------
aphextron
Great software

------
amelius
Curious, how can this compete against free open-source alternatives?

~~~
antonkm
This is a free open source alternative, the pro version is just a cloudbased
PaaS based on the same code.

Here's the GitHub:
[https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost](https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost)

