Interview with John O'Nolan of Ghost(indiehackers.com)
indiehackers.com
Interview with John O'Nolan of Ghost
https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/ghost
101 comments
Yeah that's really cool. Resonates with me. Analysis paralysis is a big problem for introverts.
I think this is so true across the board.
One of my favorite hobbies is writing. But it's so easy to get stuck into overthinking it, reading about writing, reading how other people write, etc etc etc...
Instead, I've noticed the best feeling comes from staring at a blank page and just letting the mind work things out in real-time. Sometimes it sucks (maybe most of the time), but it seems like there's plenty of times where it also goes really well.
One of my favorite hobbies is writing. But it's so easy to get stuck into overthinking it, reading about writing, reading how other people write, etc etc etc...
Instead, I've noticed the best feeling comes from staring at a blank page and just letting the mind work things out in real-time. Sometimes it sucks (maybe most of the time), but it seems like there's plenty of times where it also goes really well.
Totally agree. What I've found too is that once you actually start and get /something/ down on the page (or whatever the medium) you actually find yourself getting into a bit of a productivity flow. It might start off bad, but I find I quickly slip into actually getting stuff done once I get over that initial paralysis.
I just keep in mind a few words from the early 1980's:
"Real artists ship".
That pretty much distills it down, right?
"Real artists ship".
That pretty much distills it down, right?
The little success i have in life is largely due to this exact model. I have home-built so many big grandiose apps and solved many problems learning them myself. I didn't make any hits, hell i didn't even finish half of them, but i largely solved a lot of problems myself, figuring and learning.
Now (for better or worse) i think i'm at the stage where i need to actually improve and deploy them fully. Learn maintenance, learn upkeep, maybe even learn some minor advertising and metrics.
Self taught experience has been so insanely valuable. Value derived from pain.. but still value.
Now (for better or worse) i think i'm at the stage where i need to actually improve and deploy them fully. Learn maintenance, learn upkeep, maybe even learn some minor advertising and metrics.
Self taught experience has been so insanely valuable. Value derived from pain.. but still value.
Nice to hear you improved your technical skills. But your next step is probably not extending those skills more, by learning maintenance etc. Your next step is going to market.
Re-read the article: only a tiny part of it explains the technical challenges/mistakes. Most of it revolves around finding the problem people face, presenting them the right solution, etc. Checking if people are willing to pay for such a solution.
As said in the article: > Market-specific experience is probably the biggest and most under-valued asset that you can bring to any project. Few people ever talk about it.
Solving the technical problems is the easy part. Knowing which problem to solve, which solution to offer, how to get the right people to notice you, how to get them to give you money. That is the hard part. Start learning that part now.
Re-read the article: only a tiny part of it explains the technical challenges/mistakes. Most of it revolves around finding the problem people face, presenting them the right solution, etc. Checking if people are willing to pay for such a solution.
As said in the article: > Market-specific experience is probably the biggest and most under-valued asset that you can bring to any project. Few people ever talk about it.
Solving the technical problems is the easy part. Knowing which problem to solve, which solution to offer, how to get the right people to notice you, how to get them to give you money. That is the hard part. Start learning that part now.
Yeah I think at the start there is a lot of value in just starting, perhaps without even finishing. It's that stage of just getting over the first hurdle and getting into it.
That's fine for a while but then as you say you get to the place where you have to finish. I think this can be almost as big of a hurdle as starting as it can involve a whole host of new challenges, some of which you've mentioned above.
Finishing is also, in my opinion, typically not as exciting. You've likely already solved all the intersting problems and are left with the "lesser" tasks involved in getting it over the line. This is something I've been learning myself over the past year or two.
That's fine for a while but then as you say you get to the place where you have to finish. I think this can be almost as big of a hurdle as starting as it can involve a whole host of new challenges, some of which you've mentioned above.
Finishing is also, in my opinion, typically not as exciting. You've likely already solved all the intersting problems and are left with the "lesser" tasks involved in getting it over the line. This is something I've been learning myself over the past year or two.
Hi, I'm one of the volunteer core devs on Ghost
The company is a non-profit that supports journalism and professional publishing. Everything is open-sourced. I'm leading the work on the Desktop App (https://github.com/tryghost/Ghost-Desktop), but all projects (server, admin interface, etc) can always use more love.
If your company allows you to donate some time to non-profits and you think that democratized journalism is important, consider helping us out
The company is a non-profit that supports journalism and professional publishing. Everything is open-sourced. I'm leading the work on the Desktop App (https://github.com/tryghost/Ghost-Desktop), but all projects (server, admin interface, etc) can always use more love.
If your company allows you to donate some time to non-profits and you think that democratized journalism is important, consider helping us out
Thank you for working on it. I found Ghost Desktop App makes the whole platform much more competitive with Wordpress, their App is even called Worpress.com (https://github.com/Automattic/wp-desktop) which does not inspire confidence in my view. Do you know how it compares with their app?
I am interested and have the cycles. What issues should be started with?
Neat! To avoid being sucked into anything too big, you might want to check out the "good first" issues on the Desktop App (https://github.com/tryghost/ghost-desktop/issues?q=is%3Aopen...) or the beginner ones on the heart of it all (https://github.com/tryghost/ghost/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Ais...).
I've never understood the pricing of ghost. I started a personal blog and my first post got almost 50k uniques when it got to the top of /r/programming and the front page of hacker news.
So the pricing model of ghost is problematic because:
1) I don't know what level of plan to buy to support this kind of traffic.
2) $19/mo seems really expensive for a personal blog. (and wouldn't support my traffic load)
3) A $5 instance at DO handled the load really well with room to spare and conservatively took about an hour to setup.
So, I guess I'm not their target customer? I want to pay around $10/mo for a hosted blog and support like 500k uniques. There are some wordpress hosts that handle this level of traffic at this price point I think.
So the pricing model of ghost is problematic because:
1) I don't know what level of plan to buy to support this kind of traffic.
2) $19/mo seems really expensive for a personal blog. (and wouldn't support my traffic load)
3) A $5 instance at DO handled the load really well with room to spare and conservatively took about an hour to setup.
So, I guess I'm not their target customer? I want to pay around $10/mo for a hosted blog and support like 500k uniques. There are some wordpress hosts that handle this level of traffic at this price point I think.
They do a rolling average over three months before they ask you to upgrade. So hitting top spot on reddit or HN once or twice shouldn't be an issue.
So you're saying I can hit 300k uniques per month for three months before being asked to upgrade to the team plan?
Even so, 300k uniques would price you around $80/mo, which seems extremely high to me for a casual blog that can be self hosted on a $5 DO instance and an hours worth of work.
Even so, 300k uniques would price you around $80/mo, which seems extremely high to me for a casual blog that can be self hosted on a $5 DO instance and an hours worth of work.
In my opinion, a little bit of it is because of the "hipster premium". The same phenomenon that makes the same food/drink more expensive when served on a cutting board or in a jam jar.
I wish the suits from Ghost would weigh in on this, rather than all this conjecture. Can someone from Ghost team give us insight on why there is this disparity other than the obvious "humans must eat"
Did you not read the article? It spells out the reasoning very clearly.
"One key lesson we learned early on was not to charge too little. $5/month customers are just terrible. They have the highest rate of failed payments, the highest rate of credit card fraud, the highest amount of support tickets submitted, and are the least friendly people. We've doubled our prices 3x since then, and each time we do, we get nicer people who value the product more and create fewer problems.
At this point I would never create a business ever again which charges less than $10/month."
"One key lesson we learned early on was not to charge too little. $5/month customers are just terrible. They have the highest rate of failed payments, the highest rate of credit card fraud, the highest amount of support tickets submitted, and are the least friendly people. We've doubled our prices 3x since then, and each time we do, we get nicer people who value the product more and create fewer problems.
At this point I would never create a business ever again which charges less than $10/month."
I wonder if this is why linode avoided the $5 market for so long.
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To me setting up a server/installation and maintenance is in the chore category of work so 1hr setup and say 15/min/month maintenance ~= 3 hrs/yr. Good programmer contracts can command $500/hr and the work might actually be fulfilling. 4hrs*$500 = $2000 pays for years of hosting.
Also you are not going to hit the top of HN on a regular basis as a casual blogger. Look at real data like your blog's historical traffic in the last year to get an accurate picture of the costs.
Also you are not going to hit the top of HN on a regular basis as a casual blogger. Look at real data like your blog's historical traffic in the last year to get an accurate picture of the costs.
One should definetely consider the opportunity cost of taking matters into their own hands. However, I think the example is way over-the-top because of some reasons (most already stated by sibling comments):
* Not sure how many programming contracts can sustain a $500 hourly rate for long. If you can charge that, but can realistically only book 10% of the 'available' time, then your calculation should really be using $50, not $500.
* Example makes sense only if you're 100% booked all the time, with no spare hour here and there. If you have any sort of spare whatsoever, you can sell your unused production capacity to yourself at cost price.
* Even if you're 100% taken, not all consultant time is billable time. So that will already reduce your estimate by about 50% or so alone.
* Managing stuff takes time (and is a common full-time profession). Your example didn't account the time you will take setting up whichever third party solution you choose. Unless you have hired someone who you can just take five seconds to say 'get me set up on X and tell me when you're done' (and can be trusted to do it right without taking time to supervise/course-correct), you will perform work in setting up the platform. This work may very well take a non-insignificant fraction of the time you would take by not outsourcing, which you didn't consider in your calculation.
You may very well really hate setting up servers, and gladly pay a large sum to not do it. But then you're really paying to avoid pain, and the whole opportunity cost argument you made may be a rationalization.
* Not sure how many programming contracts can sustain a $500 hourly rate for long. If you can charge that, but can realistically only book 10% of the 'available' time, then your calculation should really be using $50, not $500.
* Example makes sense only if you're 100% booked all the time, with no spare hour here and there. If you have any sort of spare whatsoever, you can sell your unused production capacity to yourself at cost price.
* Even if you're 100% taken, not all consultant time is billable time. So that will already reduce your estimate by about 50% or so alone.
* Managing stuff takes time (and is a common full-time profession). Your example didn't account the time you will take setting up whichever third party solution you choose. Unless you have hired someone who you can just take five seconds to say 'get me set up on X and tell me when you're done' (and can be trusted to do it right without taking time to supervise/course-correct), you will perform work in setting up the platform. This work may very well take a non-insignificant fraction of the time you would take by not outsourcing, which you didn't consider in your calculation.
You may very well really hate setting up servers, and gladly pay a large sum to not do it. But then you're really paying to avoid pain, and the whole opportunity cost argument you made may be a rationalization.
>To me setting up a server/installation and maintenance is in the chore category of work so 1hr setup and say 15/min/month maintenance ~= 3 hrs/yr. Good programmer contracts can command $500/hr and the work might actually be fulfilling. 4hrs$500 = $2000 pays for years of hosting.*
The vast majority of programmers in the world (and even in the US) will never see anything $500 for 4 hours of work () (and if they do it would be some one-off lucky gig), so that's a moot point.
() which amounts to 750K/year if sustained
The vast majority of programmers in the world (and even in the US) will never see anything $500 for 4 hours of work () (and if they do it would be some one-off lucky gig), so that's a moot point.
() which amounts to 750K/year if sustained
$500 per 4hrs, is $125/hr; a working year is about 2000 working hours, so if sustained it's about $250K/year, not $750K.
OTOH, what was actually referenced in GPis $500/hr, which sustained is $1M/yr.
OTOH, what was actually referenced in GPis $500/hr, which sustained is $1M/yr.
> Good programmer contracts can command $500/hr
Ok I know this is possible, but how common is this really? I guess this might be a little bit more typical for very short contracts, like one-off work, but still.
Ok I know this is possible, but how common is this really? I guess this might be a little bit more typical for very short contracts, like one-off work, but still.
Is that $500/h freelancer/contractor fee? Because that seems absurdly high for someone on a payroll no matter how much of a rockstar they are.
If so, then you have to factor in all the non-billable hours you spend getting clients/contracts, advertising, and general housekeeping required to run a company. Then stuff like health care, car, phone, computer, electricity, office and other expenses.
Just saying that you can't just say: "my time is worth $500/hr" if that's what you bill for 4 hours a day for a client for few weeks.
If so, then you have to factor in all the non-billable hours you spend getting clients/contracts, advertising, and general housekeeping required to run a company. Then stuff like health care, car, phone, computer, electricity, office and other expenses.
Just saying that you can't just say: "my time is worth $500/hr" if that's what you bill for 4 hours a day for a client for few weeks.
Let's put it this way: it's not even clear that Lars Bak or Linus Torvalds made that much where they worked at.
This logic breaks down when you realize you can't bill out for 100% of your time, nor do you want to try to because mental health is important.
$500/hr for a programming contract? Where in the world can you get that kind of contract?
In Monaco only
I find models like nearlyfreespeech.net where you pre-pay to be perfect for friends and family for situations where they have no idea if it will even leave the ground.
There does seem to be room for someone to swoop in and become the more obvious managed ghost hosting provider.
The code itself appears to have a very liberal license, so no issues there, even if you to want to extend some things to allow better multi-tenant support and don't want to release your code.
And there is some obvious value add in someone that can simplify things like https setup, version upgrades, security patches, and the like.
The code itself appears to have a very liberal license, so no issues there, even if you to want to extend some things to allow better multi-tenant support and don't want to release your code.
And there is some obvious value add in someone that can simplify things like https setup, version upgrades, security patches, and the like.
Their pricing didn't make sense for what I wanted either. I wanted to set up two very low traffic blogs that may some day get real traffic. So as any developer would do, I spent much more money when considering my billing rate per hour in making my own version.
I have a couple Ghost blogs set up with Docker, Let's Encrypt SSL & NGINX that run on AWS. It works great for me but I haven't taken the time to open source it yet because I very slightly modified the Ghost code to play nicer on AWS. I'm also using the SQLite database which may not be ideal for everyone but it prevents me from having to pay to use multiple "real" databases from AWS.
The perks are that it is really quick & easy to add multiple blog sites. Each one lives in its own Docker container. It's also very fast on the AWS free tier. Since it's on Docker, I can boot it up anywhere very quickly as well.
If anyone is interested in working with me on improving it, I'll gladly push it to a public GitHub repo.
I have a couple Ghost blogs set up with Docker, Let's Encrypt SSL & NGINX that run on AWS. It works great for me but I haven't taken the time to open source it yet because I very slightly modified the Ghost code to play nicer on AWS. I'm also using the SQLite database which may not be ideal for everyone but it prevents me from having to pay to use multiple "real" databases from AWS.
The perks are that it is really quick & easy to add multiple blog sites. Each one lives in its own Docker container. It's also very fast on the AWS free tier. Since it's on Docker, I can boot it up anywhere very quickly as well.
If anyone is interested in working with me on improving it, I'll gladly push it to a public GitHub repo.
Very cool. I was actually looking into a platform for this and ended up with cloudron.io. they are open source as well and basically do what you have done.
I'd take a look. I'm curious about what you tweaked to the code?
I originally put this on GitHub when I started. Then I ended up doing a bunch of work & hosting it on BitBucket to a private repo while I was learning Docker & Ghost. I was trying to prevent any accidental leaks of secret keys or passwords. This linked repo has my Ghost changes in it.
I added ghost-storage-adapter-s3 to package.json so that the files would be stored on s3 instead.
I think the only other change to Ghost I made is purely optional & was done out of my taste. That was to remove the date directory appended to file uploads. https://github.com/mattferderer/ghost-blog/commit/7d373913a5... I understand why they did that, I just didn't like it. It may have also caused issues with my AWS S3 but I can't remember.
I added ghost-storage-adapter-s3 to package.json so that the files would be stored on s3 instead.
I think the only other change to Ghost I made is purely optional & was done out of my taste. That was to remove the date directory appended to file uploads. https://github.com/mattferderer/ghost-blog/commit/7d373913a5... I understand why they did that, I just didn't like it. It may have also caused issues with my AWS S3 but I can't remember.
It's weird that a company as well known as Ghost has a site that feels like a wholesale copy of Stripe's old design.
I don't know how I feel about it, slightly negative probably. I think Stripe does a lot of stuff really well, and it makes sense to copy many of the things they do, mostly from the UX and information design aspects. But to copy the branding itself seems like it defeats the point, because it makes Ghost feel cheaper.
Check out the Wayback Machine...
- Ghost 2017: https://ghost.org/features/
- Stripe 2016: https://web.archive.org/web/20160304012926/https://stripe.co... https://web.archive.org/web/20160304013548/https://stripe.co... https://web.archive.org/web/20160304014557/https://stripe.co...
I normally wouldn't have commented on this, but I just saw the "Scale API" startup's site yesterday and noticed that they too were doing a wholesale copy of not just Stripe's information design, but their branding too...
- Scale 2017: https://www.scaleapi.com/
- Stripe 2017: https://stripe.com/radar https://stripe.com/
It doesn't seem like a smart approach to take, but maybe it works.
I don't know how I feel about it, slightly negative probably. I think Stripe does a lot of stuff really well, and it makes sense to copy many of the things they do, mostly from the UX and information design aspects. But to copy the branding itself seems like it defeats the point, because it makes Ghost feel cheaper.
Check out the Wayback Machine...
- Ghost 2017: https://ghost.org/features/
- Stripe 2016: https://web.archive.org/web/20160304012926/https://stripe.co... https://web.archive.org/web/20160304013548/https://stripe.co... https://web.archive.org/web/20160304014557/https://stripe.co...
I normally wouldn't have commented on this, but I just saw the "Scale API" startup's site yesterday and noticed that they too were doing a wholesale copy of not just Stripe's information design, but their branding too...
- Scale 2017: https://www.scaleapi.com/
- Stripe 2017: https://stripe.com/radar https://stripe.com/
It doesn't seem like a smart approach to take, but maybe it works.
Besides the gradient background I'm not really seeing it on the ghost site. On the Scale site I see what you're saying. This comment does bring to mind something I heard a while back.
What web developers say to you when they see something you made with bootstrap: "Another bootstrap site."
What everyone else says when they see the same thing: "I didn't know you were good at design."
What web developers say to you when they see something you made with bootstrap: "Another bootstrap site."
What everyone else says when they see the same thing: "I didn't know you were good at design."
I agree with you.
Also, thank you for crashing my computer, stripe.com/radar.
Also, thank you for crashing my computer, stripe.com/radar.
Well most of the landing pages nowadays look the same.
I like both pages, but I don't think it feels like a copy of Stripe's design.
I like both pages, but I don't think it feels like a copy of Stripe's design.
I've been using Ghost since v0.6, 2 years ago, and I love the community. They're quite helpful on Slack.
One thing I think Ghost is missing right now is a solid mobile experience. I'm working to fill this gap with Quill [1], a native Android app for Ghost with an offline mode, image uploads, full Ghost Markdown support, and a sweet design. And it's open-source :)
Offline support in particular is IMO going to turn out to be an important feature, because I can imagine Ghost's target audience of journalists wanting to publish quick thoughts from places with a spotty connection. Admittedly I haven't actually validated this - building offline support presents an interesting engg+UX challenge, so that was the original motivator.
Feedback has been really positive so far [2], so I'm gonna keep going! Would love to get feedback from HN as well.
[1]: https://github.com/vickychijwani/quill/
[2]: https://github.com/vickychijwani/quill/wiki/What-users-say
One thing I think Ghost is missing right now is a solid mobile experience. I'm working to fill this gap with Quill [1], a native Android app for Ghost with an offline mode, image uploads, full Ghost Markdown support, and a sweet design. And it's open-source :)
Offline support in particular is IMO going to turn out to be an important feature, because I can imagine Ghost's target audience of journalists wanting to publish quick thoughts from places with a spotty connection. Admittedly I haven't actually validated this - building offline support presents an interesting engg+UX challenge, so that was the original motivator.
Feedback has been really positive so far [2], so I'm gonna keep going! Would love to get feedback from HN as well.
[1]: https://github.com/vickychijwani/quill/
[2]: https://github.com/vickychijwani/quill/wiki/What-users-say
Are you aware of this library in a very similar space? https://github.com/quilljs/quill
Not trying to put you down, just want to make sure you are aware of the potential naming conflict (both things are for authoring content) in case that creates a legal headache for you one day.
Not trying to put you down, just want to make sure you are aware of the potential naming conflict (both things are for authoring content) in case that creates a legal headache for you one day.
Yes - I only found out about it after I had my app out there with a feather logo and everything.
However I don't think it will cause big issues, as quilljs is a JS library, while Quill (the app) is targeted directly at Ghost's users who will largely (presumably) be journalists. The slight name confusion within dev circles is something we'll just have to live with.
However I don't think it will cause big issues, as quilljs is a JS library, while Quill (the app) is targeted directly at Ghost's users who will largely (presumably) be journalists. The slight name confusion within dev circles is something we'll just have to live with.
I used to self host Ghost on Digital Ocean and then switched over to their hosted offering.
I'm really happy I went with them, the culture and idea behind the company appeals to me and the lack of bells and whistles is made up for in a really simple and fun to use editing experience. At least in my opinion it far outshines Medium.
I'm really happy I went with them, the culture and idea behind the company appeals to me and the lack of bells and whistles is made up for in a really simple and fun to use editing experience. At least in my opinion it far outshines Medium.
If I might ask, why did you switch? (I self host on DO as well).
Was there a benefit to switching?
I should also ask: how much traffic were you getting?
Was there a benefit to switching?
I should also ask: how much traffic were you getting?
I got bored of having to do backups and upgrade versions etc. Also the fact that you can self host at no cost from them made me want to pay them, I like supporting companies and ideas like this.
The benefit to switching was really less maintenance and I could concentrate on writing and to invest in the future of Ghost, win/win!
My traffic is pretty low, no hits on HN yet! :) Quick glance at Google Analytics seems I hit about 1.5-2k visitors a month.
The benefit to switching was really less maintenance and I could concentrate on writing and to invest in the future of Ghost, win/win!
My traffic is pretty low, no hits on HN yet! :) Quick glance at Google Analytics seems I hit about 1.5-2k visitors a month.
Thanks so much for being a customer! :) And for those who have asked similar things about the Pro service, and why it's expensive compared to a VPS, ^ this is one of the most common reasons we get. Lots of developers start out self-hosting and then decide they'd actually rather be coding other things than maintaining their blog.
The other main difference is that Ghost(Pro) is a managed service. CDN, WAF, Backups, Security, downtime recovery, threat management, etc - are all included. TLDR you sleep easy at night while we stay awake.
Of course, these things will be of different value to everyone - depending on your situation. We actively encourage people to self-host when that's the best setup for them (which is often!) but for many, having a reliable PaaS is the best of both worlds.
It's also a great way of funding the future development of the open source software that you're using, of course. But that's a whole other thing :)
The other main difference is that Ghost(Pro) is a managed service. CDN, WAF, Backups, Security, downtime recovery, threat management, etc - are all included. TLDR you sleep easy at night while we stay awake.
Of course, these things will be of different value to everyone - depending on your situation. We actively encourage people to self-host when that's the best setup for them (which is often!) but for many, having a reliable PaaS is the best of both worlds.
It's also a great way of funding the future development of the open source software that you're using, of course. But that's a whole other thing :)
Have you considered increasing the number of views on each plan? Charging for everything else is certainly reasonable, but as I mentioned before, a single popular post can easily exceed the base plan and force you onto the Team plan at $80/mo.
Thanks for providing a great platform John :)
By day I program so the last thing I want to do when writing down my thoughts and ideas is maintain all of the above that you listed!
By day I program so the last thing I want to do when writing down my thoughts and ideas is maintain all of the above that you listed!
Have you considered something like cloudron.io? They automate backups and upgrades etc across all apps and not just Ghost.
Nope but it looks cool :)
For now I'm happy to give my $$ for hosted Ghost as you've gotta vote with your wallet!
For now I'm happy to give my $$ for hosted Ghost as you've gotta vote with your wallet!
As a followup: what were you paying on Digital Ocean?
(I know it seems like a small deal to talk about $5 or $25 for your main blog with over 1000 monthly visitors, but a lot of people experiment with dozens of little content ideas.)
(I know it seems like a small deal to talk about $5 or $25 for your main blog with over 1000 monthly visitors, but a lot of people experiment with dozens of little content ideas.)
It would have been the smallest droplet at the time so I think $5. I switched to hosted Ghost July 2015 and haven't looked back.
I'd consider self hosting again if I was planning on running lots of different domain/content ideas :)
I'd consider self hosting again if I was planning on running lots of different domain/content ideas :)
I had the exact same sequence, moving from a self hosted DO install to their hosted option.
The editing experience is what sold me, even when they had very few other features. They had been a bit slow about features currently since they are spending a lot of time making under-the-hood changes but I think it has a bright future.
The editing experience is what sold me, even when they had very few other features. They had been a bit slow about features currently since they are spending a lot of time making under-the-hood changes but I think it has a bright future.
Totally fair comment. We are (slowly but surely) coming to the end of the cycle now as we work toward releasing version 1.0. Things will definitely speed up again after that
I went in the other direction because their personal plan went from $5 (IIRC) to $20. I have a $5 droplet hosting it and the only difference is that I have to restart Ghost nightly or it will eventually seize up.
Honestly I don't know why I'm using it though. I probably should be using Jekyl or something like that.
Honestly I don't know why I'm using it though. I probably should be using Jekyl or something like that.
I tried self-hosting Ghost for a few months, then decided I couldn't live with some of the lacks (at the time, you could not reasonably put it anywhere but at the docroot of a domain). It took me about a day to switch to Pelican, and I do recommend that in particular and static generation in general.
Figuring out what kind of workflow you want is crucial. A few additions to the Pelican makefile made things much smoother for me.
Figuring out what kind of workflow you want is crucial. A few additions to the Pelican makefile made things much smoother for me.
Did you try adding a swap partition? I'm using the ghost image from digital ocean on a 5$ instance and even when I set it up manually before I didn't have the problem you described.
I didn't, but I'm not sure my constitution will withstand setting up a swap partition for a system that could be replaced by make and a trivial HTTP server.
> The other one was that we started out on hardware servers. This was right at the early stage of cloud VPS services catching on and becoming mainstream, and we were just behind the curve. It was an expensive mistake.
I wouldn't think 2013 was early stage of cloud VPS services - but maybe I don't have a good enough memory of the time.
I wouldn't think 2013 was early stage of cloud VPS services - but maybe I don't have a good enough memory of the time.
It wasn't, technically, but it was in terms of mainstream availability. Digital Ocean started around the same time as us, for reference. So it cloud VPS was just starting to become the popular option, but it was still far from being the obvious default option.
The other reason we went with hardware that I didn't mention was that we wanted to cram a whole lot (thousands) of node apps onto every server and we figured being on a bare metal setup would be an advantage to optimising that. (In practice: Not really, as it turns out!)
The other reason we went with hardware that I didn't mention was that we wanted to cram a whole lot (thousands) of node apps onto every server and we figured being on a bare metal setup would be an advantage to optimising that. (In practice: Not really, as it turns out!)
The founder thought he had hit upon a real need in the world, but put that the test before starting development. How many people only figure this out two years down the road and thousands of dev-hours wasted?
> I wrote down my thoughts in a blog post, and about 1 week and 250,000 pageviews later, I decided to start working on the idea properly.
> The next question was: Would they also open their wallets? For this, we went to Kickstarter. If we could get enough validation for people to actually fund the development of the software to a production-ready state, then we knew we would be on to something.
I love that his demo for kickstarter was 50% mockups. Truly an MVP.
> I wrote down my thoughts in a blog post, and about 1 week and 250,000 pageviews later, I decided to start working on the idea properly.
> The next question was: Would they also open their wallets? For this, we went to Kickstarter. If we could get enough validation for people to actually fund the development of the software to a production-ready state, then we knew we would be on to something.
I love that his demo for kickstarter was 50% mockups. Truly an MVP.
His first "idea" blog post seemed to have 250,000 pageviews in 1 week, which is quite impressive. I wonder where that inflow came from.
It was from right here, on this very website, the news of hackers
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I really like ghost. It's very simple, and straight forward. I've built a couple of websites based on it now, and wrote my own themes. I'm not sure I'd pay for it, but as an open source self-host project, it's pretty great.
Is it just me or was Ghost at one point a "Show HN"?
I remember playing with a minimalist blogging platform in Node.JS at one point a couple of years ago, but honestly that could be one of a dozen or so projects.
I remember playing with a minimalist blogging platform in Node.JS at one point a couple of years ago, but honestly that could be one of a dozen or so projects.
I set up Ghost on a DO droplet the other day. Even opting to manually install it rather than use the Ghost on Ubuntu image, installation and setup was a breeze.
I found the ghost pro product to be very well done. Nice clean and simple interface with only the knobs and buttons needed. Everything worked 100%. It is well worth the $20/month for a company blog.
I'm currently hosting my own ghost blog and its just as great, just takes more attention to operate it.
The DNS configuration doesn't yet support my provider. I believe they're on cloudflare (!)
I'm currently hosting my own ghost blog and its just as great, just takes more attention to operate it.
The DNS configuration doesn't yet support my provider. I believe they're on cloudflare (!)
Hm, I never realized ghost was non-profit....
Is there a serious Wordpress/Ghost alternative written in Go yet?
There’s a lightweight clone written in Go, Journey [1], which uses Ghost themes. It got a fair amount of attention at one point, but development doesn’t look very active at the moment.
[1]: https://github.com/kabukky/journey
[1]: https://github.com/kabukky/journey
Well, interesting:
> Initially I got a ton of offers for development help from people on Hacker News, which materialized to precisely nothing.
> Initially I got a ton of offers for development help from people on Hacker News, which materialized to precisely nothing.
I was experienceing really poor SEO results for my previous ghost site (self hosted on digital ocean). Never understood why...
I migrated from Wordpress to Ghost (using some sort of provided Ghost tool) and my site started getting way more hits from search engines.
I'm guessing it's because the ghost site was noticeably faster and was mobile friendly, which my old WordPress site was not. I didn't do any SEO tuning or anything.
I'm guessing it's because the ghost site was noticeably faster and was mobile friendly, which my old WordPress site was not. I didn't do any SEO tuning or anything.
> I migrated from Wordpress to Ghost (using some sort of provided Ghost tool) ...
More people should do this. Recent security issues of WP is kinda horrific, but then again it always been a security nightmare. It makes me sad that people don't realize it, the only answer you get is: " but it's so popular so it must be good", well smoking has also been popular - it doesn't mean it's good for you.
More people should do this. Recent security issues of WP is kinda horrific, but then again it always been a security nightmare. It makes me sad that people don't realize it, the only answer you get is: " but it's so popular so it must be good", well smoking has also been popular - it doesn't mean it's good for you.
I don't have much to say, except that I've been using Ghost for a while and love it.
$20/month? Seriously? No thanks.
Why does that feel like too much? Just curious how you're thinking about the pricing.
After taking a look and thinking about it, I think this platform is not for representative HN audience. We can DIY the heck out of an equivalent system based on what we know (languages, tools, platforms, etc). So it's (probably) a product for journalists and all other non-techies for whom the alternative would be to hire one or more dev/devops/sysads.
Though that's how django started. So...
Though that's how django started. So...
I'm not ChicagoDave, but what he wrote resonates with me.
I view my blog as an extension of my memory. When I write things, I do it mainly for myself, rather than to appeal to other readers. Because of this, my blog gets practically no traffic. I'm happy with github hosting my ramblings for free.
I view my blog as an extension of my memory. When I write things, I do it mainly for myself, rather than to appeal to other readers. Because of this, my blog gets practically no traffic. I'm happy with github hosting my ramblings for free.
I guess if I was a journalist, it might not be bad price, but I'm just a casual blogger. I currently host my own Wordpress site and keep it up to date myself. As the other reply to your comment mentioned, we're pretty technical here on HN and Ghost is probably something we can hack together on our own.
Even so, for the casual blogger, $5/month is probably the max.
Even so, for the casual blogger, $5/month is probably the max.
He notes right there that super price sensitive people are actually more demanding and more annoying than less price sensitive folks.
The headline is a bit misleading, i thought a subscription is $62,000 per month, which is a bit steep :)
Not a "bit" misleading but outright misleading.
Nobody would relate that to "the business makes $62k per month".
Everyone would think it's some sort of "vertu for blogging"
Nobody would relate that to "the business makes $62k per month".
Everyone would think it's some sort of "vertu for blogging"
According to their pricing[1] their lowest price is $19.00/mo. Assuming the bulk of their customers are on this price band it's roughly 3000 paying customers, paying each month.
[1] https://ghost.org/pricing/
[1] https://ghost.org/pricing/
They had it at $10 a month for a long time for people who started using it early when there were not a ton of features, myself included. So there could be a much higher number than that.
They're actually really open with their numbers...
https://ghost.org/about/
Active customers: 4,257 ARPU: $14.40 Monthly Run Rate: $62,796
Requests / month: 80M Registered users: 601,492 Github Stars: 24,921 Themes: 481
https://ghost.org/about/
Active customers: 4,257 ARPU: $14.40 Monthly Run Rate: $62,796
Requests / month: 80M Registered users: 601,492 Github Stars: 24,921 Themes: 481
What the, didn't this used to be a lot cheaper?
I cant recall it being cheaper than $10.00/mo. If you're looking for something cheaper than ghost there is Posthaven[1]. I'm not affiliated with Posthaven in any way, I just wanted to offer an alternative if anyone is looking.
[1] https://posthaven.com
[1] https://posthaven.com
Yes, they raised the price when they hit a certain version milestone.
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They talk about this in the article.
Thanks, we've removed that from the headline.
> (1) old, unfocused open-source platforms which are tired and broken, or (2) new, amazing publishing systems which are completely proprietary and closed
Nothing against Ghost, but I've spent about a decade in the area of content management and publishing and don't recognise 1 or 2. The proprietary market leader is AEM which is atrocious to actually implement once you get past their sales demos, and in open source you have Drupal which is a well proven solution for large and small scale publishing, particularly relevant with Drupal 8 and its publishing focused distro Thunder (both particularly adept at services and deployment, tricky areas in publishing)
Nothing against Ghost, but I've spent about a decade in the area of content management and publishing and don't recognise 1 or 2. The proprietary market leader is AEM which is atrocious to actually implement once you get past their sales demos, and in open source you have Drupal which is a well proven solution for large and small scale publishing, particularly relevant with Drupal 8 and its publishing focused distro Thunder (both particularly adept at services and deployment, tricky areas in publishing)
I like Drupal but I would not advise anyone to start a new project on it. Not in a world where we have Django CMS and Wagtail.
> Honestly my single piece of advice would probably be to stop looking for so much advice. Shut the fuck up and go and build something.
I like this. I see a lot of people, and I fall victim to this myself, over analysing the best way to do X, rather than just trying it and learing / adapting as you go. I think there is some value in figuring things out up front, but not at the cost of never taking the plunge.