Ghost 0.4 Released | Hacker News Reader

Ghost 0.4 Released

blog.ghost.org

106 pointspaukiatwee70 comments

There's a lot of buzz around Ghost and it's becoming the primary choice for a lot of people. When i had to choose which platform to use for my personal website i gave it a try and spent quite some time playing with it. After a couple of months: i'm switching to Jekyll.

Ghost is indeed a great platform and i consider it "Wordpress with superpowers". Yet, exactly like Wordpress, i consider this a huge commercial machine with the usual themes frenzy and marketplaces/agencies chasing customers. And i personally deeply dislike it as it's far from pushing a healthy dev environment.

It is rather "Wordpress without superpowers"

Wounder how this would be a "wordpress with superpowers" since wordpress is in 3.8 and this is only 0.4.

Are you seriously comparing the version numbers of two completely different applications? That's like saying Apache is twice as good as Nginx because Apache is on version 2.4 and Nginx is only on 1.5.

Bigger numbers means its better. It's science bro.

You sound (rightly) incredulous, but don't forget that dBASE II launched at version 2 because 2 is better than 1.

They are not completely different, they were made for a purpose(blogging), and the fact that Ghost was something that appear recently which is why it base features are things that the trend of today doesn't mean that suddenly a well stable project like WP can't whole a candle to it.

Yeah, we all love new a shiny things, but that doesn't mean that at the moment that they appear they will going to be better that well established tools like WP. As i wrote before WP is at 3.8(pretty stable) and Ghost at 0.4(early alpha) the numbers never lie. But don't get me wrong, i would like Ghost to success but still needs more time.

Could you care to explain why exactly you dislike an open source development effort with commercial elements, such as theme/module marketplaces?

And what about Ghost ecosystem that is far from a healthy dev environment?

I'll likely never use Ghost, whatwith already having put time into a nominal Wordpress site and using Jekyll or Middleman for everything else...but I hope it succeeds. The fact that it's spreading Markdown as the default writing syntax to people who were halfway dependent on turnkey Wordpress solutions and used only WYSIWYG...to me, that's a win overall for digital literacy.

Check out http://wintersmith.io/ if you're into static site generators. Not affiliated, just a fan.

> Yet, exactly like Wordpress, i consider this a huge commercial machine

Ghost itself is produced by a nonprofit organization. Though I suppose the surrounding ecosystem may eventually be just as commercial as that of Wordpress, the main Ghost developers have the explicit goal of not getting corrupted by money.

Urgh. What is the exact meaning of that "corruption" you are speaking about?

To paraphrase John O'Nolan in his original Kickstarter video for Ghost, Ghost is designed for users, not to please investors or potential acquirers. You can hear the original here: https://ghost.org/features/ starting around 2:05 in the video.

That is absolutely irrelevant to the corruption claims of OP and doesnt answer my question.

But I am OP. That's what I meant when I wrote corruption-- the idea that a nonprofit will be more user-focused since they can't be acquisition-focused, since they're not an acquisition target.

Well, ok then. In general user value and investor value are orthogonal to each other. In closed-source, proprietory, vendor locked-in products there is a conflict of interests between value for investors and value for users. I just don't see this conflict in open source software, it happens, but rarely.

Wordpress don't allow non-GPL themes and plugins in their directories, there was an entire dragged-out debate about it. That is about as far away from "corrupted by money" as it gets.

Wordpress is the victim of being popular.

You have a decent point here.

Could you summarize some of the "superpowers"?

It's clean (for now).

>Ghost is indeed a great platform and i consider it "Wordpress with superpowers".

I am wondering about this. I tried Ghost a few months ago, when digitial ocean was offering a free couple months if you tried it. I used it for a little bit, and found it much, much worse than wordpress for even simple blogging. I really like the ability to change things around easily if I don't like them.

What did I miss?

> What did I miss?

That it is still an alpha version you're using?

On the Kickstarter page [1] it's stated that it will be customizable and will support plugins. So give it some time I'd say.

[1]: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnonolan/ghost-just-a-...

Okay so the functionality definitely isn't there yet. Just planned. That definitely doesn't qualify it as "wordpress with superpowers." It's just a blogging platform with aspirations at this point.

I dispute the idea of it being a "huge commercial machine" just because people are creating themes for it and charging money for them. It's a blogging platform that has support from an ecosystem that builds themes—which is arguably a requirement for any modern blogging platform that wants to draw in regular (read: non-tech-oriented) users.

The average user wants a nice-looking site without a lot of work. Ghost wants to market itself to regular users. It just seems like common sense that they'd get theme-makers on board—especially since it played such a huge role in the growth of Tumblr and WordPress, respectively.

It's pretty easy to ignore and gets people excited about the potential here, and considering that Ghost is so new, I don't think anyone is getting rich off of it right off the bat.

It's seriously harmless and arguably healthy that people are interested in spending time creating themes for such a young platform already.

Wordpress with superpowers? I use Ghost, and while I like it and plan to stick with it for the time being, I have no clue as to these "superpowers" are you elude to.

Can you clarify?

I switched to Jekyll, too, but mostly because it means that I don't have to stay on top of security updates. When I'm serving static content that changes a few dozen times per year, interpreted web-facing server-side code is a liability. I still have fears that I have an unpatched Wordpress install sitting on a server that I care about somewhere.

I write my posts in Markdown, commit, push, and it's published. Doesn't get much easier than that.

Ghost is one of these things that you didn't know you needed until you have used it. I also have an Octopress blog running, which is great, but with the addition of static pages, I'll be switching to Ghost.

I can also see Ghost becoming a decent competitor for Wordpress. For the purpose of blogging that is, because I remember reading somewhere Ghost didn't have any intentions competing with Wordpress.

I used to use Octopress too, but when I tried out Ghost on a DO droplet I had to switch.

I had started running into problems with generating my Octopress blog when I messed up my Ruby install. Also, although it was a good thing at the time, I didn't like not being able to write posts without my MacBook to hand.

Ghost is nice, fast and easy to use. Static pages are really going to make it even better.

I had a similar issue, but came to the other conclusion: my blog is running on Middleman, and I kept it that way. My biggest problem with Ghost: lack of offline support. So while I can edit if from everywhere in a browser, I can only do that when online.

I have a setup that immediately publishes my blog somewhere when Github receives a push (working through travis). I seperate two branches, one gets pushed to a staging area, one to the live site. I do the touch-up when I am at home. I usually want to write anywhere, but not necessarily publish anywhere.

In the end, I just write my posts using any text editor I can find, be it Githubs direct editing. On the train or in a flight, I use an iPhone with a bluetooth keyboard (it works surprisingly well, except the odd looks) or my notebook to write the posts.

Yeah, the offline support is a bummer, but it's something I'm expecting to be remedied by the import/export function. An app which will handle this for you would be very cool!

Really excited about Ghost—I've had a tendency to keep a close eye on various blogging platforms, and it's easily the one with the most potential right now.

Part of it is the editor—I'm very particular about my Markdown editors, and it's one of the few web-based editors that gets close to Mou on the efficiency front.

That said, the changes made here really go a long way towards making this the platform of choice for many. I'm keeping a close eye right now—I'm on Tumblr mostly due to my follower base there, but if Ghost evolves in a way that cuts away the cruft, it could seriously be a replacement for a lot of folks.

Godspeed, Ghost team.

Thanks for pointing out Mou. I didn't knew about it, it's good although a little bit distracting at first glance.

I'd be wary of special-purpose editors. Generally devs are better served getting really, really good with one editor, and then extending it to meet their needs. Sublime Text, for example, has good Markdown syntax highlighting, and I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard to build live preview, assuming that such a plugin doesn't already exist.

That doesn't mean there isn't a place for a TTW editor - sometimes you just want to edit something in place when you're in a pinch. Nothing wrong with that. But I would argue in that case that you'd probably want a true WYSIWYG editor, a la what browsers kinda sorta give you with contenteditable containers.

I'm writing from a writer's perspective, not a developer's perspective. Which is not to say that there isn't value to what you're saying, but what I'm looking for is a good way to write quickly, not a code editor that also handles Markdown.

I want to convince the writers I edit on a daily basis to use Markdown because of its clear benefits over WYSIWYG. Sublime Text I'm sure is great and I've heard great things about it, but I'm going to have a far harder time selling the journalists I work with on that than I am with something like Mou or iA Writer.

WordPress' big weakness, IMHO, is that it has an editor which is not built for writing longer pieces and is poorly suited for editing. (Tumblr's big weakness is that it supports Markdown, but without frills.) That in my opinion is a huge issue—the words are basically the most important part of the editing process, and it means that in editing environments we're still stuck using Word or third-party tools like Editorially. What I see with Ghost is a real honest-to-God effort to focus on the editing tools first. We need more of that. It's where we spend most of our time on our blogging platforms. Why downplay that and instead put all of our energy into these inefficient WYSIWYG ContentEditable editors that nobody really, truly likes?

Not everyone who reads HN is a developer.

Wordpress.com now has Markdown [1]. Which has kept me there, so I'm guessing the timing cannot be coincidental, either.

[1] http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2013/11/19/markdown/

> Not everyone who reads HN is a developer.

Mou's tagline is "The missing Markdown editor for web developers."

I would have thought that a writer's needs would be well served with something like Aloha Editor and it's friends/competitors.

You'd be really, really wrong about that. Us writers hate using our mice when not necessary just like everyone else.

WYSIWYG can break up thought process when done poorly. And in the age of the iPad, nobody's really done it very well at all. It's kind of a relic because it doesn't translate well to touch.

Also, don't let the tagline fool you: Mou has a big audience among writers.

I've been trying to use Ghost for a small project, but I've postponed it until the {{#has}} helper[1] is implemented. There is currently no simple way to display a subset of posts.

[1]: https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/issues/1574

Very proud of this release and so glad that I was able to lend a hand in getting it out the door. Can't wait for 0.5 :D (and can't wait to find out its code name).

I think it's a very nice platform and I do not see why it has to be weaponised as a Wordpress competitor or why it should be labelled as having superpowers or lacking features.

The debate I see here is no different to the whining about Golang we've all seen recently. The bottom line is that you should know what your requirements are and thus you should know what the best solution will be. There should be no ideology about it.

Ghost is FOSS and if you do not like it, no one compels you to use it. It might seem like it is a commercial machine due to the fact, though that the software is free, it is far from a doddle to host freely. As far as I know, OpenShift is the only place to offer free, one-click hosting, and it doesn't exactly challenge paid hosts like Ghostify which offer straightforward FTP access for adding themes. That is not the fault of the platform.

For me, Ghost makes for the perfect personal blog where I just want to write some markdown and be done with it. For others I can see that it has limitations for some clients, and those limitations are intentional—just like those perceived in Golang. Ghost is there if you want it, not to supplant the ubiquitous WordPress.

All said and done, I'd still wait until 0.6 brings the eagerly awaited dashboard before I recommend it over alternative platforms.

> "It enjoys Johnnie Walker Blue Label Scotch"

Its money is better spent on a decent malt. Is it as carefree with my resources as it is with its own?

(Yep, it's a joke on HN).

Why would I spend money on a single malt when I get multiple for the same price with JW?

This says a lot about how programmers see the world (in jest :)

Has anyone preferred Specter (http://brislink.github.io/specter/) over Ghost? It seems a little less fleshed out than Ghost but also a lot less "commercial" as some have noted of the latter.

Thanks for shout out to specter. Yeah it is not as polished as ghost but I am planning to make adjustments to it.

One of the fist things that I will do is to make it's editor(http://brislink.github.io/Abstract) easier to use by adding keyboard shortcuts for previewing and saving. I am also planning to distribute specter it via npm.

Also a new version of elastic search has come out and it has made taking backups so easy. I will have to experiment on that too.

Thanks once again.

No problem. I forked Specter not too long ago and am using it to power my current blog. Thanks for creating it!

Thanks for letting me know. This makes me feel good. I thought no one but me used it :). I guess I will spend more time on it now.

I've just upgraded my blog; http://james.brooks.so - it was surprisingly easy for a Node.js app.

I'm really liking the static pages, it's just a shame that the default Casper theme doesn't list these in the header.

Is that hosted on Ghost or your server?

It's on my server, DigitalOcean droplet with a Ghost install by default.

And the DB? How is the load handling?

It's an SQLite 3 database, but Ghost allows you to export it to JSON for backing up.

I've not had a big load in the few days I've changed from Octopress to Ghost, so I don't know how well it handles it.

Doesn't Ghost work on MySQL?

Agreed. I was like, i have to go to the static pages by typing the full url?

We've been using ghost for the startup, and I've been using it for my personal blog as well. I credit it with making writing more enjoyable, leading to more being written. By far my biggest issue was losing text, which should be fixed in 0.4. The joys of using alpha software. Best of luck to the Ghost team. I expect great things from them.

Just today I was thinking to myself how educated I have become within the WordPress development, I can now remove every single tab from the "New Post" dashboard and leave myself only with the editor.

It's a wonderful thing.

I just got their email.

But I was kind of annoyed by the usage of words.

'Free 0.4 upgrade'

It does imply, there are going to paid upgrades. If so, why they are making it look like a free open source product, while it is by all means is a commercial product.

It's not an issue for me. But If they want to live up to open source and free standards, then they should avoid this strategy.

You're reading way too far into this. There are no plans whatsoever to close-source or charge for the project (other than the paid hosting plans currently offered). That's plastered all over the kickstarter[0] as well as the website[1].

[0] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnonolan/ghost-just-a-...

[1] https://ghost.org/about/

Not to go against what you're claiming, but to play devils advocate for a moment if you take a look at Invision Power Board[0] (now called IP.Board), they were once a free and open source bulletin board / forum system. In fact, their slogan was:

Apache, PHP and mySQL are all free, why should you pay for a bulletin board?[1]

They've since completely reversed their stance on that and now require payment for IP.Board. I'm sure there are other examples of this happening too, that's just the one that I remember most clearly when it comes to companies taking once free software and then charging for it.

[0]http://www.invisionpower.com/apps/board/ [1]http://web.archive.org/web/20020912123518/http://www.invisio...?

aah!! coincidentally i do own a license of IPB. I never knew it was free. I love IPB as a paid BB. My sole point was, If one's product is not 'commercial' then they shouldn't advertise it in a commercial fashion either. Because I can see, a lot IPB Free users would be pissed off, when they had made the switch.

Some people just associate upgrades with paid products. My guess is they just wanted to stress that it's free.

awww.. it don't like postgres anymore. And postgres is not supported for backups.. sigh. :(

anyone has tips or tricks? or should I say byebye heroku since I can't use sqlite there?

I've started hitting some Ghost based sites from HN links and I like the public facing side of it a lot. As other people have said I think I'll stick with Jekyll

Johnnie Walker Blue Label is a scotch not a bourbon

It's also not exactly a great choice marketing-wise as far as good sounding scotches that would impress a scotch drinker...

yess, static pages!! ghost was in dire need of that. Such a basic feature, yet you dont realize how much you want it until it's not available out of the box. Really happy to see the platform maturing nicely. Great job Ghost team!

Just one question. Is there API that can be used to integrate ghost with other apps?

per the GitHub issue, apps should be in 0.5. With apps I'm sure you can write your own integrations with other platforms.

https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/issues/1474

Is there still no support for post types such as links, asides, etc.?

Ghost supports tags as classes if I'm right, which would allow you to do a pseudo-version of this pretty easy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com