Ghost Launches to The Public

Taking a look at their &quot;idea&quot; page, I found myself nodding along with most of their bullet points (or shrugging and saying &quot;not exactly my preference, but I can see why you&#x27;d want that&quot;), until I hit:<p><pre><code> 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. </code></pre> 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?<p>In the real world, people need compatibility more than they need whatever cleanup you&#x27;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.<p>I&#x27;m so sick of trendy &quot;modern&quot; frameworks like Rails that break compatibility every 5 minutes, and listing breaking compatibility as a major feature is a huge turnoff.<p>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?

I&#x27;ve been looking forward to this release. Not because I want the blogging platform, but to take a look.<p>In the node world, it&#x27;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.<p>Here, we got a node express backend with handlebars as the templating engine, defined grunt tasks, some unit tests and backbone on the client.<p>I am really looking forward to keep diving as the project progresses!

Browsed the code a little bit and my overall impressions are the while the code quality is good, it&#x27;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&#x27;s going to be a bit of work to do. I&#x27;ll probably still do it but it would have been nice if the db stuff had been abstracted a little further out

It&#x27;s great to see how Kickstarter helped also &quot;stabilize&quot; 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&#x2F;community adoption. I&#x27;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&#x2F;Nettuts) starts doing something similar as for Laravel [1][2][3], and provide free developer introduction to the platform.<p>Glad to see this, hope it will keep up the expectations.<p>[0] <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andrewgodwin/schema-migrations-for-django" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kickstarter.com&#x2F;projects&#x2F;andrewgodwin&#x2F;schema-migr...</a><p>[1] <a href="http://laravel.com/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;laravel.com&#x2F;</a><p>[2] <a href="http://net.tutsplus.com/tag/laravel/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;net.tutsplus.com&#x2F;tag&#x2F;laravel&#x2F;</a><p>[3] <a href="https://tutsplus.com/course/laravel-essentials/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tutsplus.com&#x2F;course&#x2F;laravel-essentials&#x2F;</a>

What would you say is the biggest difference compared to Svbtle and Medium?<p>From a first glimpse:<p>Plus: - Good design, simple to use, friendly colors. - MIT license. - Well done support forum.<p>Minus: - Features should be more clear. - I might be mean but when I read &quot;Just a blogging platform&quot;, I automatically read &quot;Just a(nother) blogging platform.&quot; - 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 &quot;Ghost&quot;? Maybe it has some meaning? - Git Link way too hidden.<p>Good job!

It took a bit of effort as the code is unstable, but I&#x27;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.<p>I also have an instance up and running[2] if you want to play with it. Messing it up doesn&#x27;t matter to me as I will just docker run a new one. Have fun.<p>Username: nstinemates@gmail.com<p>Password: demodemodemo<p>1: <a href="https://github.com/keeb/Ghost/blob/add-dockerfile/Dockerfile" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;keeb&#x2F;Ghost&#x2F;blob&#x2F;add-dockerfile&#x2F;Dockerfile</a><p>2: <a href="http://stinemat.es:49429/ghost/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;stinemat.es:49429&#x2F;ghost&#x2F;</a><p>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.<p>Link updated.

What are the best practices for deploying a node.js app from git on Ubuntu behind nginx? I&#x27;m sure someone has a blog post on that but &quot;Ghost&quot; makes it a bit difficult to google for.<p>In case anyone&#x27;s looking, this PPA[1] seems to come recommended and has an up-to-date node.<p>[1] <a href="https://launchpad.net/~chris-lea/+archive/node.js/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;launchpad.net&#x2F;~chris-lea&#x2F;+archive&#x2F;node.js&#x2F;</a>

Well, I tried taking a look at it, but the setup is kind of funky.<p>* [edit] Download link seems to have been fixed.<p>* Cloned the repo instead and set everything up. Cloning the submodule for the theme didn&#x27;t work due to some rights issue. Cloned it by hand then.<p>* Setup was pretty easy otherwise, even though I&#x27;m using the development version.<p>* [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.<p>* No direct link to the interface on the blog index (or am I blind?). Have to add &#x2F;ghost by hand.<p>* Rest seems pretty nice, though barebone. No comment system, why? The only benefit to static blogs that is left is the online editor.

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&#x27;m not really tempted to continue fiddling.<p>15923 error sqlite3@2.1.16 install: `node build.js` 15923 error `cmd &quot;&#x2F;c&quot; &quot;node build.js&quot;` 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 &quot;C:\\Program Files\\nodejs\\\\node.exe&quot; &quot;C:\\Program Files\\nodejs\\node_modules\\npm\\bin\\npm-cli.js&quot; &quot;install&quot; &quot;--production&quot; 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 ]

Repository available on GitHub: <a href="https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;TryGhost&#x2F;Ghost</a>

Ghost looks great and I&#x27;ll likely end up using it for a couple of projects but..<p>&quot;We have successfully created the world&#x27;s first fully functioning blogging platform built entirely with JavaScript.&quot;<p>Really? The world&#x27;s first entirely JavaScript blogging platform? Google turns up plenty, albeit not quite as polished.

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&#x27;t understand this part:<p>&quot;you have, in the case of Content that includes computer code, accurately categorized and&#x2F;or described the type, nature, uses and effects of the materials, whether requested to do so by Ghost Foundation or otherwise&quot;<p>There&#x27;s also the combination of reserving the right to take down any content for any reason. That&#x27;s fine for a free service, but unacceptable for a paid one, particularly one that claims that it needn&#x27;t give refunds.

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.

Awesome! I&#x27;ve been following John O&#x27;Nolan&#x27;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&#x27;m looking forward to the future of this project. Just incase anyone else is looking for the source code, it&#x27;s here: <a href="https://github.com/tryghost" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;tryghost</a><p>[1] - <a href="https://github.com/joeblau/bl0g" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;joeblau&#x2F;bl0g</a>

Anyone got a list of features? This page doesn&#x27;t tell us much.<p>Edit: <a href="http://www.ghost.org/features/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ghost.org&#x2F;features&#x2F;</a><p>Looks like markdown+looks stylish. Not sure what else.

This is the firs I&#x27;ve heard for ghost. Here&#x27;s the Kickstarter page for anyone else looking for more info:<p><a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnonolan/ghost-just-a-blogging-platform" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kickstarter.com&#x2F;projects&#x2F;johnonolan&#x2F;ghost-just-a-...</a>

Anyone remember Specter? Very simple blogging engine with elasticsearch backend.<p><a href="http://brislink.github.io/specter/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;brislink.github.io&#x2F;specter&#x2F;</a><p>I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s out to replace Wordpress like Ghost is trying to do though.

Looks nice. Hate to shit on their sandwich, but the main question I&#x27;m asking is &quot;why would I use this and not Wordpress?&quot;

I&#x27;m really impressed with the buy-in they&#x27;ve got from other companies regarding it. I wonder how they achieved that.

I would love to see an easy way to publish this to gh-pages on Github.<p>Are the posts stored in a db or are they generated HTML?

Hmm, isn&#x27;t this name caught by trademark law in the UK? Ghost is almost certainly a trademark of Symantec; wouldn&#x27;t this fall into the same trademark category?

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:<p>* &quot;Oh, a New Zealand accent. One of us! I hope this is really awesome and I want to try this out already.&quot;<p>* &quot;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.&quot;

What&#x27;s so fascinating about the momentum that gathered behind Ghost and it&#x27;s funding campaign was that they selling the feature-set in part, but maybe in even larger part, the fact that it wasn&#x27;t WP. My sense was that people backed it as much out of a sense of &quot;sending a message to David&quot; as they did wanting something better.

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&#x27;ve put together an example here: <a href="https://github.com/badsyntax/gruntfile" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;badsyntax&#x2F;gruntfile</a>

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?

After briefly looking over documentation, it seems that Ghost doesn&#x27;t support post types like links, asides, images, etc. Or did I overlook something? If else, future implementation?

I see many user have some hard time setting up the Node.js &#x2F; npm environment <i>before</i> being able to get Ghost up and running.<p>I would expect the editor of Logdown much better to use. It reads Github Flavored Markdown, has code highlighting, drag &amp; drop image upload. And it&#x27;s an online service, so you don&#x27;t need to deal with the server stuffs. Much easier to use.<p><a href="http://logdown.com/demo" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;logdown.com&#x2F;demo</a>

I&#x27;ve installed ghost to my raspberry pi and have...<p>&gt; ghost@0.3.2 start &#x2F;var&#x2F;www&#x2F;servers&#x2F;www.<i></i><i></i>.dyndns.org&#x2F;pages&#x2F;ghost<p>&gt; node index<p>Ghost is running...<p>Listening on 127.0.0.1:2368<p>Url configured as: <a href="http://my-ghost-blog.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;my-ghost-blog.com</a><p>Ctrl+C to shut down<p>127.0.0.1:2368 gives me an unable to establish a connection error (btw, I&#x27;m ssh-ing into my pi on the lan).<p>and also 127.0.0.1:2368&#x2F;ghost where I am meant to access my admin account setup.<p>Any idea what went wrong?

What is it with web pages &#x2F; 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

I can&#x27;t take anyone seriously who uses fonts to display icons (it doesn&#x27;t work when you turn off foreign fonts!)<p>Sadly, nowadays thats pretty much everyone. If you want me to care about you (apparently&#x2F;marketwise you don&#x27;t), then get your design right. Tip: Design is not looking pretty. Design is this question: Does it work?

&gt; No one expects an app written for OSX 10.4 Tiger to work on OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion.<p>That&#x27;s truly sad.

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

Nice! I see it&#x27;s using nodejs&#x2F;express. Great to have another large nodejs webapp out there publicly -- I wonder if there&#x27;s any generally useful tech inside Ghost.

Ghost got launched to the public, but how come I didn&#x27;t get an email after signing up on there list. Seems like that would be an important place to make an announcement.

How people find energy to create yet another blogging platform.

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

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).

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

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

After 30 minutes all i can say is<p>Build failed [sqlite3]: 1 npm ERR! weird error 1 npm ERR! not ok code 0

A link from the project&#x27;s homepage to the source code in github would be great.

&quot;too many blogging platforms, not that many quality content providers.&quot;

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.

It would be neat if there were import&#x2F;export plugins for WordPress. Import plugins for Jekyll are a killer feature IMHO (can&#x27;t really force myself to accept using Disqus for comments though, which makes me like Ghost).

Will Symantec&#x27;s trademark lawyers be a threat here?

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.

Try Logdown <a href="http://logdown.com/demo" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;logdown.com&#x2F;demo</a>

anyone do a security audit?

been using this for a while<p>things i&#x27;ve noticed so far (.3.0):<p>- no dash yet<p>- no view posts by category feature<p>- no list top 10 most recent posts<p>- kind of confusing or redundant mvc abstraction<p>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.<p>good:<p>- easy to install<p>- love the editor<p>- love the admin<p>- templates are handlebars and easy<p>i&#x27;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!

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.

Let&#x27;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?)