
Ghost 0.3 (Kerouac) Launches - mu_killnine
http://blog.ghost.org/launch
======
jergason
Site looks great and congrats on the release.

This announcement suffers from the common problem of assuming readers already
know what Ghost is. A few paragraphs down you mention Markdown and Jack
Kerouac so I assume Ghost is related to text editing, but a sentence or two at
the very top that explains Ghost would make this much better.

Again, congrats on the launch.

~~~
Touche
Does a website have to summarize the purpose of the website in every article
it contains? Could you have just looks at the address bar, typed in ghost.org
and found out easily?

~~~
MWil
I think not every article. Probably a good idea around release though...

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graue
This is only semi-on-topic, but it's really cool how Ghost is a non-profit
organization:

[http://ghost.onolan.org/what-it-means-to-be-non-
profit](http://ghost.onolan.org/what-it-means-to-be-non-profit)

and the post does a good job explaining what that means and why it was chosen.
I definitely want to see more mini-Mozillas :)

~~~
tarball
Come on guys, this is just money an promesses right now. Mini Mozilla
seriously…

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mu_killnine
I thought I'd mention that this is the release for Kickstarter backers only
right now. Unfortunately, I didn't find out about this project until after the
KS so I am out of luck for a few weeks.

If you don't know what Ghost is, I suggest you take a look at John O'Nolan's
post from a while back that precipitated Ghost:
[http://john.onolan.org/ghost](http://john.onolan.org/ghost)

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shrklzrs
0.3.0 snapshot:
[https://mega.co.nz/#!71IC1LoT!QHVtaCL21w5-VzPBsSPdJRo3ayIeGu...](https://mega.co.nz/#!71IC1LoT!QHVtaCL21w5-VzPBsSPdJRo3ayIeGuFJY2f0UfUWbVY)

~~~
Kudos
I wonder how many people are foolish enough to download and run unverified
code like this.

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pearjuice
Wordpress is plug and play on almost any webhost out there (some even have
installers for it). Ghost is node.js which is barely supported by webhosting
companies (you will most likely need a VPS or some specific node.js HaaS, at
least).

How will this not be a huge barrier to achieve the same traction Wordpress
has?

~~~
unicornporn
It WILL be a huge barrier. It think Ruby was one (of many) reason(s) Diaspora*
never took off. RoR is mainstream compared to Node.js. In my opinion Node is a
wacko choice for a non-profit company looking to create a broad appeal
blogging software which will be a real alternative to WordPress.

~~~
benatkin
No, the lack of interest from hosting providers wasn't why ruby failed. It's
due mostly to performance issues, some of which are due to its design and some
of which are due to its implementation.

~~~
trebor
However with Ruby 1.9 - 2.0 (2.1 will support generational gc, finally) the
performance of Ruby (with ORM and non-c frameworks, like phalcon and Yaf) is
drawing close to parity with PHP.[1] I think that what drove diaspora's
failure is the lack of people who truly care to run their own nodes. There's a
pretty steep "cost of acquisition" to get a single diaspora user.

[1]:
[http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r6&hw=i7...](http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r6&hw=i7&test=db&l=3y8&f=zik0zj-
zi8sfz-34v)

~~~
pearjuice
Wait, Ruby is actually slower than PHP? So whenever some webdev laughs at me
for using PHP and points me to that "A fractal of bad design" article, I can
just laugh back and say "Well, at least my language is faster!"? Amazing.

~~~
reeses
Ruby, as generally served with Rails, has historically been _much_ slower than
SQL-in-the-page PHP with APC/etc.

One example[1], from 37 Signals back in 2009, showed a 320ms response time
(gack!) with 9,000 requests per minute on 10 4vcpu/4gb VMs in a private
cluster.

Assuming they had a reasonably tuned storage subsystem, this is pretty
terrible performance. That's about 150 requests per second for 10 VMs with 40
vcpus and 40gb RAM. However, that doesn't quite match up with the 320ms claim,
which would have them pushing a little lower. I'll assume a rounding error.

Things have gotten better in many cases, but hardware and scaling up and out
is still the best way to improve rails performance.

[1] [https://37signals.com/svn/posts/1819-basecamp-now-with-
more-...](https://37signals.com/svn/posts/1819-basecamp-now-with-more-vroom)

~~~
benatkin
I don't think I could find a better summary for why rails was bad for a CMS
than that post. You could do much better with ruby but until some more killer
non-rails ruby web apps are written, ruby's reputation will be inseparable
from that of rails.

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cabbeer
I'd love to try this, I'm just in the process of creating my blog with jekyll
but this seems like a good alternative. Any chance I can contribute now and
get on the list?

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Touche
Awesome news. I'm assuming Ghost saves to a database. Hopefully it is written
in such a way that it will be easy to plugin a static-generation module. Since
this is Node.js I'm guessing you are using Express, and it would be great if
backends could be implemented as middleware. Really looking forward to taking
a look at the source!

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MrBra
Can someone share his/her view on what made Ghost go up to £196,362 out of
£25,000 goal on Kickstarter?

~~~
jdc0589
Its a modern open source blogging platform using current popular technologies.
Add in the simplicity of markdown based editing, what promises to be a good
theme and plugin development experience, and I can see the attraction over
stuff like wordpress and drupal. I could easily start a rant about PHP, so
suffice it to say that the chance of a good new blog platform NOT WRITTEN PHP
is a pretty huge deal.

~~~
teamonkey
Out of interest, what _is_ it written in?

~~~
perishabledave
Javascript on Node.js

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currywurst
Thank you for not forgetting RSS support ! And, wishing the 'Ghosts' all
success !

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slig
Super nice domain name. Now they should buy ghost.com and build a hosted
version. ;-)

~~~
MAGZine
before it was tryghost.com, so i'd say this is a certain improvement!

i would be surprised if they didn't try to build a hosted version, wordpress
style.

~~~
mu_killnine
I believe it was actually [http://tryghost.org](http://tryghost.org)

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iSnow
Congrats, this is one kickstarter that delivered, not to be taken for granted.

Unfortunately I was late for the campaign, but once it hits the public, I'll
give it a try.

For those who don't know, it's a new blogging platform based on Node.js that
tries to break away from the wordpress bloat and get blogging back to basics.
And with great looks :)

~~~
cabbeer
What are some good/ cost effective hosting solutions for node?

~~~
baudehlo
Here's a decent list:

[https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Node-
Hosting](https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Node-Hosting)

------
galapago
Is this the demo?

[http://blog.tryghost.org/](http://blog.tryghost.org/)

~~~
joeblau
This is probably a better representation:
[http://ghost.onolan.org/](http://ghost.onolan.org/)

~~~
cabbeer
Can you create additional, non post pages? (work, contact etc)

~~~
joeblau
I'm not sure exactly. I just follow John on Twitter and get updates via that.
There are lots of unanswered questions that I think we'll be getting answers
to over the next few weeks.

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mpeg
Why not let people buy it? Says the public release is in "a few weeks" \- I'll
probably have forgotten it exists by then, but now I would probably impulse
pay $20 for early access.

Also, is the code going to be in github?

~~~
bchar
From the link: "In a couple of weeks, once we've ironed some bugs, smoothed
some edges, and given those people a chance to try Ghost out... we'll be
opening up Ghost to the public. The Github repository will go public, and
everyone will be able to sign up for an account on Ghost.org."

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freeman478
It seems the code is not yet public on github. Any idea when it will be ?

~~~
adefa
"In a couple of weeks, once we've ironed some bugs, smoothed some edges, and
given those people a chance to try Ghost out... we'll be opening up Ghost to
the public. The Github repository will go public, and everyone will be able to
sign up for an account on Ghost.org."

------
jmuguy
Did an email go out to backers with how to download the release (asking
because I haven't received anything)? /edit scratch that, we got an email!

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null_ptr
Congratulations, your blog site somehow manages to freeze and crash Firefox 24
Android each and every time I open it.

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norswap
What sets Ghost apart from other blogging platforms or even from just pushing
markdown files to github?

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tigerweeds
Congrats! I've been waiting for this

