Ghost - a new "just blogging" platform now fully funded on Kickstarter

[40hz]

This is a very interesting Kickstarter project that is now fully funded. It's called Ghost, and it promises to be an incredibly powerful but simple to use tool that is designed to be "just a blogging platform." (KS project page here.)

Ghost is a platform dedicated to one thing: Publishing. It's beautifully designed, completely customiseable and completely Open Source. Ghost allows you to write and publish your own blog, giving you the tools to make it easy and even (gasp) fun to do. It's simple, elegant, and designed so that you can spend less time messing with making your blog work - and more time blogging.

This is the part that really caught my attention

Ghost has a smart writing screen. Markdown on the left, and a live preview on the right. Write down your ideas and format them on the fly, never pausing to click on endless formatting buttons, never having to write long/painful HTML to express your ideas. You can even theme the preview pane to match your blog's formatting exactly.

That looks to be the answer to a prayer for the average blog writer. Adding images also seems to be done with a simple drag and drop. Very nice that!

Check out their video here.

This dev team has rock solid credentials and programming experience, plus a working prototype, so this project looks very good so far. Apparently other people thought so too. Funding target was for £25,000. Actual funding is now at £87,000 with 25 days still left to go.

The public release of the software is set for September 2013. It will be released under the MIT License.

They'll also be offering a hosted package like Wordpress does if you don't want to host your own installation. It will be available to project backers in November of this year. The general public will need to wait until January 2014 to open an account.  Pricing has yet to be determined.

This looks to be very cool.

[wraith808]

Also, a stretch goal has been announced - if they reach £250,000, every backer will receive free hosted setup for a year.

[rgdot]

One of the apparent raison d'etre of Ghost is being a simpler WordPress. I never saw WordPress as complex so I don't get that. Otherwise a simple attractive blogging platform is nice.

[TaoPhoenix]

Hmm, Sept 2013? Does it take that long for good blogging software to be written!?

I have trouble keeping the Long Game in mind these days!  

[wraith808]

One of the apparent raison d'etre of Ghost is being a simpler WordPress. I never saw WordPress as complex so I don't get that. Otherwise a simple attractive blogging platform is nice.

-rgdot (May 02, 2013, 03:05 PM)

We're not exactly typical  Believe me... working with a few different people outside of the tech sphere on their sites, I can see their frustrations as indications that Wordpress has a few problems on the UX front.

I do know that wordpress, however, is very simple to setup on many different platforms; I've my own reservations on Ghost being as easy to set up.  It would be nice, however.  I love Markdown, and for that reason alone, I want this to succeed.

[40hz]

I love Markdown, and for that reason alone, I want this to succeed.

-wraith808 (May 02, 2013, 03:21 PM)

Exactly.

[TaoPhoenix]

What is Markdown?

[40hz]

One of the apparent raison d'etre of Ghost is being a simpler WordPress. I never saw WordPress as complex so I don't get that. Otherwise a simple attractive blogging platform is nice.

-rgdot (May 02, 2013, 03:05 PM)

I don't think it's so much it's complex as that it's very easy to break.

And because of its "everything plus the kitchen sink" modular design (with plug-ins independently developed by coders of varying talent) it's not problem that will ever go completely away.

Ghost seems to be approaching this with a "less is more" philosophy. As in: address one use extremely well and call it a day. You say you want to do other stuff with Ghost? Ok, here's the source code. Go knock yourself out.

The problem I see most non-tech types having with WP is they just don't get the basic idea behind it. They can't (or won't) grok the whole concept of a CMS - which is kinda technical, even on a cursory level. HTML they get. CSS gets dicey. But when you mention pHp code plus a database and a web server, their eyes start to glaze over. "Whaddaya mean my pages don't actually exist as webpages? Whaddya mean they're created on the fly as they're requested by a browser except for static pages. And what's static pages, eh Preciousssss? Give us nice HTML files and keep your nasty CMS!"

Face it rgdot. We're all basically mutants here.

[40hz]

What is Markdown?

-TaoPhoenix (May 02, 2013, 03:26 PM)

It's totally awesome!

See here and here and here.

[TaoPhoenix]

What is Markdown?

-TaoPhoenix (May 02, 2013, 03:26 PM)

It's totally awesome!

See here and here and here.

-40hz (May 02, 2013, 03:47 PM)

That's too many "Here" 's. They make me allergic!

[40hz]

What is Markdown?

-TaoPhoenix (May 02, 2013, 03:26 PM)

It's totally awesome!

See here and here and here.

-40hz (May 02, 2013, 03:47 PM)

That's too many "Here" 's. They make me allergic!

-TaoPhoenix (May 02, 2013, 03:55 PM)

That's the price you pay for being too lazy to Google it yourself!

[wraith808]

Or, I can give you one link. 

[tomos]

markdown - isn't that what Wikipedia uses?
(if so, go to a page there Tao, and click edit to see what it looks like)

[mahesh2k]

Wordpress is good because the deployment on the server is easy and hosted platform is also free and easy to use. If the ghost can do that then well, it would be better. but if the ghost is built on something like rails or say node.js then I dont think there would be more takers.

[wraith808]

markdown - isn't that what Wikipedia uses?
(if so, go to a page there Tao, and click edit to see what it looks like)

-tomos (May 03, 2013, 04:44 AM)

No, Wikipedia doesn't use it.  It uses its own syntax, which shares some similarities, but is not Markdown.  For well known sites that use Markdown, refer to GitHub, reddit and Stack Overflow.

Wordpress is good because the deployment on the server is easy and hosted platform is also free and easy to use. If the ghost can do that then well, it would be better. but if the ghost is built on something like rails or say node.js then I dont think there would be more takers.

-mahesh2k (May 03, 2013, 07:58 AM)

It is built on node.js (as stated in the link), and uses by default SQLLite through JugglingDB ORM.  I was a bit concerned about the use of node.js, but a couple of things mitigate this- first they are using the Express framework (which is already easy to deploy), and they are packaging using NPM, making it even easier.