
Ghost Launches to The Public - jallardice
http://blog.ghost.org/public-launch/
======
lambda
Taking a look at their "idea" page, I found myself nodding along with most of
their bullet points (or shrugging and saying "not exactly my preference, but I
can see why you'd want that"), until I hit:

    
    
      Ghost would have cut-off points with major versions, 
      allowing core developers to remove old code from the 
      codebase and evolve the platform to allow it to improve. 
      No one expects an app written for OSX 10.4 Tiger to work 
      on OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion.
    

Oh, hell no. Backwards compatibility is way more important than some shiny new
feature. When I upgrade my software, I expect it to work better, not break. If
I have a working plugin from 5 years ago, why should I have to fight with some
pointless API redesign just to get it to work again?

In the real world, people need compatibility more than they need whatever
cleanup you're able to do by breaking compatibility. Heck, in many cases you
can get both by doing your rewrite but leaving a compatibility layer on top
that gives you the compatibility that you need.

I'm so sick of trendy "modern" frameworks like Rails that break compatibility
every 5 minutes, and listing breaking compatibility as a major feature is a
huge turnoff.

How about focusing on spending the pre-1.0 releases iterating and designing a
really good API that will be amenable to backwards compatible extensions, and
then sticking to that API and backwards compatible extensions to it for the
forseeable future?

~~~
RandallBrown
How long do you expect upgrades to work before a break in compatibility?

The difference between 10.4 and 10.8 is seven years. That doesn't seem like an
outrageous amount of time to break compatibility.

~~~
rustynails
My last computer retired - 1 month ago. It was more than 5 years old, running
Windows XP. XP is still very popular and I _would_ expect it to still be
supported and it's 12 years old. Where did you get your 7 year magic number
from?

~~~
ameoba
You can't talk about Windows XP like it's a single, fixed point in the release
cycle. XP was released in 2001, giving you your 12 year number, but there were
also major service packs released in 2002(SP1), 2004(SP2) & 2008(SP3). The
last release of XP was only 5 years ago - more recently than OS X 10.4

Of the new software that still claims XP compatibility, much of it requires
SP3.

~~~
NicoJuicy
SP 3 is free (Service Packs) and it's just because the .Net framework requires
SP3.

So actually, XP = XP SP3.

~~~
ameoba
Yes, it's free but that doesn't mean it's painless. Going to SP2 and SP3 broke
backwards compatibility with some drivers and software. It increased the
RAM/CPU requirements for running the OS comfortably. They weren't just
harmless stacks of collected bug fixes.

------
kh_hk
I've been looking forward to this release. Not because I want the blogging
platform, but to take a look.

In the node world, it's easy to find reference code on libraries and modules,
but I always fail to find a source of some practices further developed than
todo lists. It is not about the code (which as far as I have looked is Ok),
but about tying technologies and practices together.

Here, we got a node express backend with handlebars as the templating engine,
defined grunt tasks, some unit tests and backbone on the client.

I am really looking forward to keep diving as the project progresses!

~~~
2mur
Check out issacs npm-www[0] too. I found it helpful for trying to learn how to
get things done sans express.

[0] [https://github.com/isaacs/npm-www](https://github.com/isaacs/npm-www)

~~~
babby
I used this a bit :). I think everyone should make their own frameworks from
scratch so they know exactly how it all works.

By the end of it you might, like me, just continue with your own framework
(when you can of course).

------
Touche
Browsed the code a little bit and my overall impressions are the while the
code quality is good, it's a shame that it seems to be tightly coupled to
doing a database as the backend. I was hoping to fork Ghost, or even better
just provide a plugin for it, that uses static file creation instead of a db
backend but looking at the code this looks like it's going to be a bit of work
to do. I'll probably still do it but it would have been nice if the db stuff
had been abstracted a little further out

~~~
babby
Been watching Ghost for a while and ever since I saw it get so much funding I
thought to myself; with those pledged features I could do this alone, better,
faster. Since then I have been sidetracked with a closed source somewhat-
overlapping project but now that Ghost is out I plan to steal some ideas
people actually like from it and continue building my own platform. Kinda
makes me chuckle in that they got payed to do this and yet their feature set
is still so underdeveloped, for a blogging platform of all things.

I think now that you've made your point I may abstract models to the point
where the database can be either MariaDB or a bunch of JSON files/SQLite. Its
tricky because I build databases for performance and scalability over
flexibility.

To give you an idea of what I mean, Wordpress makes me cringe in the way they
handle their tags, categories etc. and the sheer amount of SQL queries and
joins for a simple front page. I make at most 2 queries for the front page
(excluding sidebar, which would be cached), the user session authentication
and the articles. I make no queries if I can help it ( Caching in node.js is
so fun ). Categories are always in memory, along with user roles, settings
etc.

It's really quite glorious having a readily available memory store. I'm
getting around ~500 queries per second to my front page in apachebench, which
would normally have about 7-10 queries to the database.

~~~
rmrfrmrf
Honestly, a _better Wordpress_ is something that the majority of people with a
reasonable understanding of web development and database design (or hey, with
a NoSQL store, maybe not even that! /troll) could do in a weekend. However, as
you've said, we all have other things to do, but more importantly, it's the
free upgrades and transfer of liability that make Wordpress enticing. I'm sure
there are plenty of developers out there (myself included) that are happy to
say "there's a bug in Wordpress that we'll need to patch" vs. "there's a bug
in my code that we'll need to patch".

~~~
wodenokoto
That is simply not true. You could not write a whole CMS with plugin-api,
template system, image manipulation, user roles, auto-installer (and auto
updater of plug-ins and entire install), comments system, image galleries,
media manager as well as a administration backend (that mind you not only
needs to work, but also needs to be designed visually) as well as a high
quality default theme.

Where do you guys get off saying such things? It's a completely absurd
statement. Of course you can't do that.

~~~
mdigi
I see those comments mostly coming from people that used wordpress once in
2005 and never touched it since.

------
aram
It's great to see how Kickstarter helped also "stabilize" the development of
Open Source software (another example is Django Migrations project [0] which
has been discussed here a couple of times already). It helped Ghost provide
something on a much higher and usable level than most other Open Source
projects did, which should have positive impact on the user/community
adoption. I'm speaking here about collaboration with Digital Ocean, Rackspace
and Envato, as well as the marketing campaign by Kickstarter before this
release. DOcean, RackSpace and Envato alone will generate pretty high traffic
and build up the community, especially if Envato (with Tutsplus/Nettuts)
starts doing something similar as for Laravel [1][2][3], and provide free
developer introduction to the platform.

Glad to see this, hope it will keep up the expectations.

[0] [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andrewgodwin/schema-
migr...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andrewgodwin/schema-migrations-
for-django)

[1] [http://laravel.com/](http://laravel.com/)

[2]
[http://net.tutsplus.com/tag/laravel/](http://net.tutsplus.com/tag/laravel/)

[3] [https://tutsplus.com/course/laravel-
essentials/](https://tutsplus.com/course/laravel-essentials/)

~~~
BCM43
I think it's the idea in general, not the specific platform. Joey Hess was
able to successfully run his own crowdfunding campaign with custom written
software.

[https://campaign.joeyh.name/](https://campaign.joeyh.name/)

~~~
aram
I agree about the crowdfunding idea; very often I find myself
saying/attributing "Kickstarter" when I really mean "crowdfunding" :)

Thanks for the Git-Annex link - didn't know he ran a campaign on his own after
doing it on Kickstarter.

------
jermaink
What would you say is the biggest difference compared to Svbtle and Medium?

From a first glimpse:

Plus: \- Good design, simple to use, friendly colors. \- MIT license. \- Well
done support forum.

Minus: \- Features should be more clear. \- I might be mean but when I read
"Just a blogging platform", I automatically read "Just a(nother) blogging
platform." \- Better replace the laptop+wodden table+moleskine+coffee stock
image with something better. Everyone is using that stuff right now. If you
want to be different, better look different. \- Why the name "Ghost"? Maybe it
has some meaning? \- Git Link way too hidden.

Good job!

~~~
uptown
"What would you say is the biggest difference compared to Svbtle and Medium?"

Svbtle and Medium are hosted (and as a result, controlled-by) a 3rd party. You
host Ghost yourself, giving you complete control over the platform. I think a
better comparison would be probably be to Wordpress.

~~~
rattray
I'm choosing between this and Medium, and the user-facing design (at least the
theme demo'd on their blog) looks similar.

I'd like to hear a comparison (though happy to throw wordpress in the
consideration pool too)

~~~
dsowers
If you're choosing between Ghost and Medium, and would like something that is
hosted, I recently released Silvrback
([https://www.silvrback.com](https://www.silvrback.com)). It has the
simplicity of Medium, while giving you control over your own brand.

~~~
arca_vorago
Ugg. I really like where you were going with that, but you lost me at this:
"People shouldn't spend any time configuring a server for a blog."

Maybe _some_ people shouldn't be spending any time configuring a server for a
blog, but I have been increasingly working to take back control of my data and
it's related services. That means I want to be able to install things on a
server of my choosing. This also means FOSS wherever I can possibly put it. I
would even happily pay for the FOSS, but the thing I hate the most about
medium, svbtle, and the others, is that I can't use the platform where I want
to and I don't see gpl/mit anywhere.

I understand that your intention is the hosted segment, but I really think you
could gain a lot more traction by going to a one time price, FOSing the code,
and still offering a paid hosting service for those that want it.

Maybe it's just because the older I get the more I am aligning with RMS.

~~~
dsowers
Yeah, you're right. There's always going to be a group of people that want to
configure everything themselves and setup their own servers. I'm not really
targeting this group with silvrback. Open source ghost would be the best route
for you.

However, there are a number of people looking for hosted solutions so they
don't have to waste any time with config issues. This is where Silvrback comes
in. Also, Silvrback should really only be compared to the hosted version of
Ghost (which isn't out yet). Comparing it to open source isn't really
possible.

~~~
arca_vorago
"Comparing it to open source isn't really possible."

I don't really understand this line of reasoning. You are running code on your
servers, are you not? Your code is either closed or open. (closed) How is
comparing it to open source not possible?

~~~
dsowers
Just not possible in the sense that a hosted solution has the expectation that
everything is managed for you. An open-source solution requires you to do the
work of setting it up, configuring, handling traffic spikes, backups, etc...

~~~
arca_vorago
I see your intention now, but you are using the words in the wrong context
with the wrong definition. There are plenty of hosted open source products
that require little to no setup.

------
nickstinemates
It took a bit of effort as the code is unstable, but I've managed to create a
pretty interesting Dockerfile[1]. Just run a git clone, git submodule init,
and then docker build from within that directory. That will then allow you to
have an instance to test and play around with.

I also have an instance up and running[2] if you want to play with it. Messing
it up doesn't matter to me as I will just docker run a new one. Have fun.

Username: nstinemates@gmail.com

Password: demodemodemo

1: [https://github.com/keeb/Ghost/blob/add-
dockerfile/Dockerfile](https://github.com/keeb/Ghost/blob/add-
dockerfile/Dockerfile)

2: [http://stinemat.es:49429/ghost/](http://stinemat.es:49429/ghost/)

edit: One of you lovely gentle souls decided to change the demo password.
Thanks for making me have to `docker stop` then `docker run` a new one and
inconveniencing me for all of 2 seconds.

Link updated.

~~~
illyism
Using "nick" as username gives me: "invalid e-mail".

~~~
nickstinemates
ah - nstinemates@gmail.com is the login then. I'll edit.

------
spindritf
What are the best practices for deploying a node.js app from git on Ubuntu
behind nginx? I'm sure someone has a blog post on that but "Ghost" makes it a
bit difficult to google for.

In case anyone's looking, this PPA[1] seems to come recommended and has an up-
to-date node.

[1] [https://launchpad.net/~chris-
lea/+archive/node.js/](https://launchpad.net/~chris-lea/+archive/node.js/)

~~~
hippich
I am using Dokku

~~~
andreypopp
Which in this case would make things a little more difficult cause Ghost uses
SQLite and Dokku can't deploy apps which use it because of default Node.js
Heroku buildpack which prohibits SQLite usage. You can patch a buildpack
though.

For example in my fork of Dokku I replaced Heroku buildpacks with plain
Dockerfiles to define both a stack and a runtime dependencies —
[https://github.com/andreypopp/upaas](https://github.com/andreypopp/upaas)

------
ElongatedTowel
Well, I tried taking a look at it, but the setup is kind of funky.

* [edit] Download link seems to have been fixed.

* Cloned the repo instead and set everything up. Cloning the submodule for the theme didn't work due to some rights issue. Cloned it by hand then.

* Setup was pretty easy otherwise, even though I'm using the development version.

* [edit] Nevermind. You can signup without the mail sender beeing setup, just not recover the password it seems. Notifications per mail are also disabled. Should have read more carefully.

* No direct link to the interface on the blog index (or am I blind?). Have to add /ghost by hand.

* Rest seems pretty nice, though barebone. No comment system, why? The only benefit to static blogs that is left is the online editor.

~~~
fit2rule
I had a different funky experience. I at first struggled, then paid attention
to what I was doing, and then got it set up and running quite smoothly.

Path A: Warts and Brew: * Mac OSX 10.9 * latest homebrew

    
    
        1. brew install npm && brew install node.js
        2. gem install bourbon && gem install sass
        3. Then: Do the Installation / Setup instructions here: 
    

[https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.m...](https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md)

... because: you have to install some ruby templates and such .. please note
that you should also have done 'gem instal sass' step above, before you do
step #3 ..

I found it works quite well if you get through that setup. I'm impressed
enough to have been using it as an app for the last day or so .. its got a
nice interface. I'd love to have time to hack up more templates.

Plan B: The easy route: vagrant Well, another great use for vagrant. Works
very smoothly as well: [https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost-
Vagrant](https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost-Vagrant)

~~~
johndunnu
Does Homebrew work on 10.9? Have you seen any problems?

~~~
fit2rule
Haven't found any issues, this is a brand new MBP though, fresh install as of
about two weeks ago, and no hiccups so far..

------
NKCSS
Trying to install it fails on sqlite3 for me (Windows 8). Too bad; wanted to
check it out quickly, but if the firs thing you do starts throwing errors, I'm
not really tempted to continue fiddling.

15923 error sqlite3@2.1.16 install: `node build.js` 15923 error `cmd "/c"
"node build.js"` failed with 1 15924 error Failed at the sqlite3@2.1.16
install script. 15924 error This is most likely a problem with the sqlite3
package, 15924 error not with npm itself. 15924 error Tell the author that
this fails on your system: 15924 error node build.js 15924 error You can get
their info via: 15924 error npm owner ls sqlite3 15924 error There is likely
additional logging output above. 15925 error System Windows_NT 6.2.9200 15926
error command "C:\\\Program Files\\\nodejs\\\\\\\node.exe" "C:\\\Program
Files\\\nodejs\\\node_modules\\\npm\\\bin\\\npm-cli.js" "install"
"\--production" 15927 error cwd C:\Users\Nick\Downloads\ghost-0.3.2 15928
error node -v v0.8.16 15929 error npm -v 1.1.69 15930 error code ELIFECYCLE
15931 verbose exit [ 1, true ]

~~~
spleeder
Update Node to the latest stable version and you should have no more problems.

~~~
NKCSS
That did the trick :) Might be good to add some pre-condition where you tell
the user to update to a supported version of node before attempting to install
:)

------
nopassrecover
Repository available on GitHub:
[https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost](https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost)

------
chrisbridgett
Ghost looks great and I'll likely end up using it for a couple of projects
but..

"We have successfully created the world's first fully functioning blogging
platform built entirely with JavaScript."

Really? The world's first entirely JavaScript blogging platform? Google turns
up plenty, albeit not quite as polished.

~~~
gexla
It's tricky to argue labels. To me (right or wrong) platform suggests support,
active development, community, backing, a reason to believe that development
will continue and something you can build on. Of course, you can call platform
whatever you like though.

Ghost has many (all?) of the above, and that's relatively rare in any
ecosystem (PHP, Ruby, Python, whatever) for a young project. If this project
can continue building momentum, then it would truly be unique in general and
certainly in the JS ecosystem.

ETA: When I say tricky throwing around labels, I mean one thing can mean one
thing to me and something else to you. I guess semantics would be the short
word for that.

------
termain
I know that the hosting service is not the platform, but i found the terms of
service to be a bit onerous. They require full legal names, for one and I
don't understand this part:

"you have, in the case of Content that includes computer code, accurately
categorized and/or described the type, nature, uses and effects of the
materials, whether requested to do so by Ghost Foundation or otherwise"

There's also the combination of reserving the right to take down any content
for any reason. That's fine for a free service, but unacceptable for a paid
one, particularly one that claims that it needn't give refunds.

------
matteodepalo
I really like the idea of having images for popular hosting providers like
Digital Ocean and Rackspace; this should lower the entry level difficulty
tremendously. I wish Discourse would do something similar, as I believe it
would spread the adoption very quickly.

~~~
ridruejo
You can use the BitNami installers to install them anywhere, including the
hosting providers you mention. BitNami also supports Discourse

~~~
matteodepalo
Wow I didn't know that, thank you!

------
joeblau
Awesome! I've been following John O'Nolan's project since it was announced on
Kickstarter. I even started writing my own version which is up on GitHub[1].
Just signed up and I'm looking forward to the future of this project. Just
incase anyone else is looking for the source code, it's here:
[https://github.com/tryghost](https://github.com/tryghost)

[1] - [https://github.com/joeblau/bl0g](https://github.com/joeblau/bl0g)

------
nodata
Anyone got a list of features? This page doesn't tell us much.

Edit: [http://www.ghost.org/features/](http://www.ghost.org/features/)

Looks like markdown+looks stylish. Not sure what else.

------
wiremine
This is the firs I've heard for ghost. Here's the Kickstarter page for anyone
else looking for more info:

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

------
sw00
Anyone remember Specter? Very simple blogging engine with elasticsearch
backend.

[http://brislink.github.io/specter/](http://brislink.github.io/specter/)

I don't think it's out to replace Wordpress like Ghost is trying to do though.

------
rocky1138
Looks nice. Hate to shit on their sandwich, but the main question I'm asking
is "why would I use this and not Wordpress?"

~~~
hugofirth
SO many reasons, many of which boil down into the following sentiment:

\- Wordpress has become a over-convoluted behemoth, with a needlessly complex
structure that is not overly extensible. It is a pain to develop
for/with/around.

I think everyone can appreciate the very tangible effect that Wordpress has
had on the web. However, it is currently in the rather painful throws of a
transition from blogging platform to CMS, and has been for quite some time.

There are number of other reasons:

\- You want to avoid PHP.

\- You don't need most of the feature bloat that comes along with Wordpress.

\- You want to use Markdown.

\- You want to try something different.

~~~
alan_cx
With all due....

You say "SO many reasons", but at best you have 4, of which only one seems to
hold any weight. Avoiding PHP is not something the average blogger would care
about, bloat = features and most normal people like features, trying something
different is woolly at best, which leaves wanting to use markdown. Do that
many people really want to use markdown?

Are you 100% sure this isn't just an anti thing like anti MS, anti facebook,
and now anti wordpress?

~~~
andyhmltn
Wordpress is incredibly bloated. If you've ever tried to make a semi-large
blog with it you'll know exactly what I mean. This is literally just a setup
and run blog.

Wordpress used to be that but it's turned into a _huge_ CMS that's trying to
do 2000 things at once. Jack of all trades and master of none if you will.

~~~
jonheller
> This is literally just a setup and run blog.

Wordpress isn't? Unless things have changed you install it and start adding
blog posts.

~~~
andyhmltn
Not really no. I mean you can but Wordpress's admin page feels like you are
fighting just to post something. Wordpress is no longer really targeted at
people that want to get a blog up and running and just that.

That's what ghost is. It's a blogging system without all the added bloat and
horrible API's to go with it.

~~~
Karunamon
_Wordpress 's admin page feels like you are fighting just to post something._

???

    
    
      1) Log into admin area (usually /wp-admin)
      2) Click "Posts" on left sidebar (first icon on the top)
      3) Write
      4) Submit
    

Is the current iteration of wordpress different from this workflow? Is Ghost
different?

~~~
egypturnash
Hell, if you're logged in, you'll see a bar at the top of the screen with "\+
New" on every single page of your site.

------
girvo
I'm really impressed with the buy-in they've got from other companies
regarding it. I wonder how they achieved that.

------
marcamillion
I would love to see an easy way to publish this to gh-pages on Github.

Are the posts stored in a db or are they generated HTML?

~~~
shitduck
Ghost uses SQLite by default, but the ORM allows for other databases
seamlessly.

~~~
marcamillion
It's awesome that it has an ORM - but ever since I have started using
Octopress, which is based on Jekyll, is the more I realize that we don't need
a DB for 'just blogging'.

Plain, old, generated HTML works perfectly. Plus it is very easy to host.

If this is something you guys can implement, I would suggest looking at it.

Your hosting will be MUCH simpler, cheaper, more profitable (even though you
say you are running a non-profit), general footprint will be smaller, and
pages will load quicker.

That's just my $0.02.

I love what I see here, but I can't bring myself to going back to a db-powered
blog from Octopress.

The day you guys implement something similar, you will have 1 more user
though!

Either way....awesome execution and congrats on everything you guys have done.
Love it so far.

~~~
Xylakant
> is the more I realize that we don't need a DB for 'just blogging'.

That works for you and me (we're using jekyll here) but not for people that
want timed releases and an online editor. Comments will need some sort of
database as well, so you'll have to rely on disqus or similar if you're
running a static blog.

~~~
Touche
Why can't you do static generation from an online editor?

~~~
Xylakant
Because you need to write somewhere. Now, you can write to the filesystem if
you really really want to, but only if there is a writable FS somewhere - so
e.g. not on heroku - but in any case writing to the FS and then serving that
document is a whole can of worms.

~~~
Touche
Actually what I want ideally is the admin interface to be a Node app. For
drafts use sqlite. For scheduling use sqlite. When I hit publish I want it to
generate static assets.

The blog itself I don't need to be served by the Node app, Apache or Nginx can
do that fine.

~~~
Xylakant
> For scheduling use sqlite.

Well, scheduling and static generation require a cron job that writes the
static asset at the predefined time. It all gets complicated from here. You
can write the static asset when it's first accessed for example and from there
on serve the static file, but that requires a database/storage as well, so
you're basically back to square one.

I'd not restrict myself to sqlite here either, but that's a minor nitpick.

~~~
Touche
Why does it require a database? Ghost has a Markdown editor and presumable
stores posts in the database as markdown, just write the markdown to the file
system instead of a database? I'm really not seeing any requirement for a
database here.

~~~
Xylakant
Well, yes, you can write to the filesystem, that's why I'm saying
"database/storage". See, heroku for example does not provide you with a
writable filesystem and it's also easier to share a database over a couple of
hosts than a filesystem. Also, if you want to schedule, you'll need to store
the scheduling information somewhere. You can add it to the file itself, just
as jekyll does but then you'll have to open all docs just to see if they need
scheduling. Or you write a schedule-file, but by the time you're doing that
you're effectively building a database. Why not go and use a "real" database
adapter and use sqlite for all basic setups since basically, sqlite is a
specially formatted file with a library providing useful abstractions on top.

------
bencollier49
Hmm, isn't this name caught by trademark law in the UK? Ghost is almost
certainly a trademark of Symantec; wouldn't this fall into the same trademark
category?

~~~
pkrefta
Let's hope that there'll be no problems such as this and it'll solved in good
spirit some day.

~~~
bencollier49
We wouldn't want problems like this haunting the project in future.

~~~
phillc73
More likely it will be a specter over the entire project for years to come.

~~~
Macsenour
Booooooooo (But I laughed anyway)

------
stevoski
A demonstration of how we (I?) judge projects and people via the wrong
criteria; as I watched the video, this is what went through my mind:

* "Oh, a New Zealand accent. One of us! I hope this is really awesome and I want to try this out already."

* "Oh, he says he was in charge of WordPress interface design for two years. Using WordPress causes me pain. I expect this product to be painful."

~~~
wmeredith
"Oh, he says he was in charge of WordPress interface design for two years.
Using WordPress causes me pain. I expect this product to be painful."

Wait, what?

WordPress' backend may be a mess, but it's CMS interface is the only one I've
ever trained a non-technical person on that they liked or seemed to be able to
use right away. I worked at a marketing/dev shop for years and have probably
trained 40-ish non-techy clients (usually small marketing teams of 3-4) on
customized CMS installs. WordPress' dashboard was by far the best when it came
to power/usability ratio.

~~~
taylorbuley
A lot of people feel their data is exceptional, and so meta data is where I
see "custom" hurt content creation the most: Whereas WordPress has a neatly
rolled meta data extensions into "Custom Fields" many CMS degrade into a
morass of form fields.

People should be wary of custom built CMS UIs, not only because most people
have learned a UI like WordPress or Tumblr.

------
zenmaker
What's so fascinating about the momentum that gathered behind Ghost and it's
funding campaign was that they selling the feature-set in part, but maybe in
even larger part, the fact that it wasn't WP. My sense was that people backed
it as much out of a sense of "sending a message to David" as they did wanting
something better.

------
mradmin
I would recommend splitting out the monolithic Gruntfile.js into individual
config and task files. It makes it easier to read, in my opinion. I've put
together an example here:
[https://github.com/badsyntax/gruntfile](https://github.com/badsyntax/gruntfile)

~~~
davexunit
Off topic, but someone please explain to me what Grunt does that is so
special? It seems like it's re-inventing Make for no good reason.

------
calibwam
Is the registering on ghost.org for hosting a blog on that page, or to obtain
the prepackaged zip files the README at github talks about? In other words, to
host ghost myself, do I need to register at ghost.org or do I have to clone
the github repo?

~~~
zedpm
Eventually you'll be able to their hosted service, but for now when you
register you just get access to a source download for self-hosting and access
to their forums.

------
eugeneross
After briefly looking over documentation, it seems that Ghost doesn't support
post types like links, asides, images, etc. Or did I overlook something? If
else, future implementation?

------
tonilin
I see many user have some hard time setting up the Node.js / npm environment
_before_ being able to get Ghost up and running.

I would expect the editor of Logdown much better to use. It reads Github
Flavored Markdown, has code highlighting, drag & drop image upload. And it's
an online service, so you don't need to deal with the server stuffs. Much
easier to use.

[http://logdown.com/demo](http://logdown.com/demo)

------
leke
I've installed ghost to my raspberry pi and have...

> ghost@0.3.2 start /var/www/servers/www. __ __.dyndns.org /pages/ghost

> node index

Ghost is running...

Listening on 127.0.0.1:2368

Url configured as: [http://my-ghost-blog.com](http://my-ghost-blog.com)

Ctrl+C to shut down

127.0.0.1:2368 gives me an unable to establish a connection error (btw, I'm
ssh-ing into my pi on the lan).

and also 127.0.0.1:2368/ghost where I am meant to access my admin account
setup.

Any idea what went wrong?

~~~
leke
If anyone finds this on google, and is having the same problem...

Because I was ssh-ing into the pi, in the config file, I had to change the
localhost address to my pi's address on the lan. Then access it via that lan
address with the suggested port.

------
dingdingdang
What is it with web pages / blogs and their wild tendencies with using 18px+
fonts for the body text? I can read something like a third of the text off the
screen as compared to for an example HN?! Ridiculous that I have to be
habituated to using the zoom feature in Firefox to simply read a page instead
of looking at one and a half paragraph like is the case on Ghost.org

------
mrottenkolber
I can't take anyone seriously who uses fonts to display icons (it doesn't work
when you turn off foreign fonts!)

Sadly, nowadays thats pretty much everyone. If you want me to care about you
(apparently/marketwise you don't), then get your design right. Tip: Design is
not looking pretty. Design is this question: Does it work?

~~~
mrottenkolber
I will reply to all collectively:

> Why would you turn off foreign fonts?

Because I don't want foreign fonts. They are usually either just bad (e.g.
worse than my OS font) or render badly.

> It's an edge case, 0.0000001%, ....

You are not downwards compatible. It's an edge case because you make it one by
deciding on web "standards" by thoughtlessly applying these short-sighted
idioms.

~~~
peferron
It's a tradeoff, just like not supporting users on IE9- or with JS disabled.

Using sprites instead of fonts to support users with foreign fonts disabled
means degrading the product for some other users. Building a polyfill means
not spending the time improving something else.

Why do you consider "support everyone" to be obviously better than "build a
better product for a subset of users"?

I feel like the undending debates around this issue (most often regarding JS)
exist because some people on HN look at it through a business angle where #2
can make complete sense, while some others look at it through a Web ideals
angle where anything but #1 is heresy.

Edit: To be fair, the Web ideals remark doesn't seem to apply to you. You
rather seem to consider than being pretty is way less important than
supporting more people. But why? Being pretty has been increasingly important
this past decade, and especially so regarding blogs where being pretty is one
of the few differentiators.

~~~
mrottenkolber
> Why do you consider "support everyone" to be obviously better than "build a
> better product for a subset of users"?

Blogs are my newspapers, thats why. For me accessibility and downwards
compatability outweigh the "product" a lot. I have a low-end smart phone for
which most "products" are ununsable. Why do people throw away expensive
hardware that woks perfectly fine? Because the modern software doesn't run on
it.

Take for example the opposite: [http://blog.fefe.de](http://blog.fefe.de)

That is a product that meets my demands: I can read on any device, using
multiple clients. I could read this page with a dual-core as well as with a
gameboy. Serve TTF font's, maybe I rather use bitmap fonts? Doesn't matter.

I could read that blog using Mosaic, lynx, w3m... kindle displays... It also
works fine for braille terminals.

I guess I am more interested in powerful systems than the pityful products of
the App-bubble. After all I am a programmer.

------
postfuturist
> No one expects an app written for OSX 10.4 Tiger to work on OSX 10.8
> Mountain Lion.

That's truly sad.

~~~
danso
Why is that? I think you're misled by OSX's numbering system, which uses .x
where other operating systems might use whole numbers. In fact, I misestimated
myself...I thought each dot-version represented a year, with Tiger being 4
years old.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Tiger](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Tiger)

However, Tiger is actually 8 years old. I don't think obsolesence in eight
years is too horrible.

------
andybak
I always felt node.js needed a Rails or a Django before it needed a layer on
top of that. i.e. a content-oriented MV-whatever framework.

By my understanding node.js is rather low-level to be a good platform for
content-driven sites. Is this inaccurate?

------
cjbprime
Nice! I see it's using nodejs/express. Great to have another large nodejs
webapp out there publicly -- I wonder if there's any generally useful tech
inside Ghost.

~~~
jallardice
> I wonder if there's any generally useful tech inside Ghost

One of the nicest things about it (aside from the use of node and express,
which is very nice IMHO) is that it's open source so you can start looking
through the code to find out.

------
brenfrow
Ghost got launched to the public, but how come I didn't get an email after
signing up on there list. Seems like that would be an important place to make
an announcement.

------
yankoff
How people find energy to create yet another blogging platform.

------
theklub
Man, I was all excited for some open source ghosting software.

------
adamtulinius
Warning; the zip-file explodes into a mess, make sure to extract it into a
directory (unzip -d ghost-0.3.2 ghost-0.3.2.zip).

------
AhtiK
Is there a caching layer built in or how does it make sense to create a
blogging platform with the performance of NodeJS?

------
guynamedloren
Possibly a silly question, but can a non-profit get acquired? If so, how does
that work?

------
madradavid
After 30 minutes all i can say is

Build failed [sqlite3]: 1 npm ERR! weird error 1 npm ERR! not ok code 0

------
lobo_tuerto
A link from the project's homepage to the source code in github would be
great.

------
beshrkayali
"too many blogging platforms, not that many quality content providers."

------
philliphaydon
Meh, database, pass. I liked the idea of Jekyll of writing markdown and
compiling it to static HTML so I wrote Snow to see if it was possible in .NET,
now just refactoring and adding features. Markdown and Static files for a blog
is the way to go.

------
r0muald
It would be neat if there were import/export plugins for WordPress. Import
plugins for Jekyll are a killer feature IMHO (can't really force myself to
accept using Disqus for comments though, which makes me like Ghost).

~~~
r0muald
Just noted that there is a WordPress to Ghost plugin:
[http://wordpress.org/plugins/ghost/](http://wordpress.org/plugins/ghost/) and
that you can export a JSON dump of your Ghost blog from e.g.
[http://localhost:2368/ghost/debug/](http://localhost:2368/ghost/debug/) (not
otherwise linked from the admin).

------
Finster
Will Symantec's trademark lawyers be a threat here?

------
bachback
Very, very interesting. There are a lot of to be announced in there,
especially pricing. But as this is opensource I thank the creators of this and
will hope to contribute.

------
xdite
Try Logdown [http://logdown.com/demo](http://logdown.com/demo)

------
officialjunk
anyone do a security audit?

------
moneyrich4
been using this for a while

things i've noticed so far (.3.0):

\- no dash yet

\- no view posts by category feature

\- no list top 10 most recent posts

\- kind of confusing or redundant mvc abstraction

i hacked up a view posts by category and a template swap by hostURL in a few
hours but the code is really abstracted. it will probably make sense later
when all the features are implemented though.

good:

\- easy to install

\- love the editor

\- love the admin

\- templates are handlebars and easy

i've been following this for ~6 months now and am stoked to use it. congrats
on your release. can we please have a CMS style feature were we can edit some
static pages to go into our blogs! PLZ!

~~~
fit2rule
Hey ... I've been playing with Ghost now for a few hours and wondering if
you've gotten any new templates set up, or have tips for template tweaking?
I'm a newcomer to bourbon and sass ..

~~~
moneyrich4
yea ive made a few templates

i recommend just copything the casper folder and renaming it.
(content/themes/casper)

make your own stylesheet and comment theirs out (it, styles, everything).
theirs is screen.css.

you can comment out the ghost included {{body_class}} and {{ghost_foot}} by
changing them to {{!body_class}} and {{!ghost_foot}}

after that its just 3 files, default.hbs which is a global template (so its
like the html head body tags), and then they insert the body at {{body}}

the body comes from index.hbs or post.hbs, which will be index.hbs: 6 article
summaries in a list with a page at the bottom. and post.hbs which will just
show 1 post.

the data in the post and index hbs files (handlebars templates) has stuff like
{{eachpost}} {{post}} which is all you really have to keep out of those files

------
antocv
Why is there no link to the ghost service from the blog? I hate all these blog
pages that dont link to the page they are for.

~~~
jallardice
There's a link to the GitHub repository which I believe is all that is
currently available. You can clone the repo (or download an archive of it) and
install the platform from that.

~~~
oe
There's also [http://ghost.org/](http://ghost.org/) which holds a lot of
information, but blog.ghost.org doesn't link there.

------
dschiptsov
Let's make predictions, at what amount of active users they will realize that
NodeJS is a meaningless waste of resources and will try to migrate to
something else?)

~~~
babby
But it's not. I just launched a website that handles many taxing db queries
over multiple pages and I'm able to achieve ~500 requests per second on a
single worker with some simple memory caching. PHP is a waste of resources in
the proper sense of the terminology, thus this Ghost stuff is fundamentally
better.

~~~
dschiptsov
Everything, even Rails, looks great compared to PHP.))

