Ghost

Author: Ole-Aleksander Brænna <oBraenna91>

Introduction:

Ghost CMS is a popular content management system specifically designed for bloggers. It’s an open-source CMS, and in this study-case, we’ll explore it’s history, main features and how to get started with Ghost.

Brief history:

Ghost was created in 2013 by John O’Nolan, a former Deputy Head of the WordPress user interface team. O’Nolan was frustrated with the complexity and bloating of existing blogging platforms and he wanted to create a modern and minimalist CMS that would put the focus on creating content.

O’Nolan launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the development of Ghost, and the campaign raised over £196,000. The first version of Ghost was released in September of 2013. Ghost was praised by the users for its simplicity, speed, and ease of use, and it quickly established itself as a popular alternative to more complex and bloated CMS platforms.

Over the years, Ghost has continued to evolve and improve. The Ghost team has added new features and functionality, and they have worked hard to make Ghost more accessible to a wider range of users. Today, Ghost is used by thousands of bloggers and content creators around the world, and it remains one of the most popular and highly regarded CMS platforms in the industry.

Main features:

Ghost has a minimalist and elegant user interface that puts the focus on creating great content.
Ghost comes with a built-in editor that supports markdown syntax, making it easy to write and format content.
Ghost allows you to create custom post types, such as pages, tags, authors etc, which can help you organize your content more effectively.
Ghost supports custom themes, which allow you to change the look and feel of your site.
Ghost uses dynamic routing which allows you to create custom URLs for your content and optimize your site for search engines.
Ghost supports multiple users and roles, making it easy to collaborate with others and manage permissions.
Ghost has built-in SEO features, including meta descriptions, tags, and optimized URLs, which can help your content rank higher in search engines.
Ghost allows you to schedule posts to be published at a future date and time.
Ghost integrates with popular analytics services, such as Google Analytics, so you can track and analyze your site’s traffic.
Ghost has a powerful API and webhook system, which allows you to integrate with other services and automate workflows.

Market comparison:

When compared to other popular CMS platforms like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla, Ghost stands out for its simplicity, speed, and focus on blogging. While it may not have as many features or ability to be as customizable as some of the other CMS platforms, it’s a great choice for bloggers and content creators who want to focus on creating content without getting bogged down in technical details.

Compared with WordPress, Ghost is solely based on blogging, while WordPress offers a lot more complexity and the ability to manage for example e-commerce sites as well. The communities are quite different when it comes to the size and amount of users, meaninng that it could be more difficult to find plugins, themes and previously asked questions with Ghost. WordPress also offers more features and customization than Ghost, but at the cost of a more complex interface. Ghost would be recommended for the users that would like an easy and fast way to create content, without the need for a lot of extra faetures and complexity.

Main advantages

Open source
User friendly interface
It´s designed to be “light and fast”, quick loading times
Optimized for blogging
Has a broad selection of themes and integration with other services.

Main disadvantages

Limited functionality: it is designed to be easy and quick which means that some advance features is not available
If you want some of the more advanced features you have to pay
Not a lot of plugins you can install

How to get started:

Below is a general guide to installing Ghost:

Check the system requirements

Ghost requires a modern version of Node.js and a few other dependencies to run. Make sure your server meets the system requirements before proceeding.

Download Ghost

You can download the latest version of Ghost from the website https://ghost.org or from the Ghost repository on GitHub.

Install Ghost

Once you have downloaded Ghost, extract the files to a directory on your server. Then open a terminal and navigate to the directory where Ghost is installed and run the following command:

npm install --production

This will install all the dependencies required by Ghost.

Configure Ghost

Ghost comes with a default configuration file that you can use to get started. Copy the config.example.js file to config.js and edit the configuration settings as needed.

Start Ghost

Once you have configured Ghost, you can start the Ghost process by running the following command:

npm start --production

This will start Ghost in production mode, which is the recommended way to run Ghost for most users.

Access Ghost

Once Ghost is running, you can access it by opening a web browser and navigating to http://localhost:2368.

Conclusion:

Overall, Ghost is a great choice for bloggers and content creators who value simplicity, speed, and ease of use. It may not be the best choice for complex websites or applications but it is an excellent option for those who want to focus on creating content fast without getting stalled with technical details.