Ghost Launches to The Public

http://blog.ghost.org/public-launch/

by jallardice • 13 years ago

475 261 13 years ago

blog.ghost.org

Repository available on GitHub: https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost

joeblau4• 13 years ago

Awesome! I've been following John O'Nolan'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'm looking forward to the future of this project. Just incase anyone else is looking for the source code, it's here: https://github.com/tryghost

[1] https://github.com/joeblau/bl0g

chrisbridgett• 13 years ago

Ghost looks great and I'll likely end up using it for a couple of projects but..

"We have successfully created the world's first fully functioning blogging platform built entirely with JavaScript."

Really? The world's first entirely JavaScript blogging platform? Google turns up plenty, albeit not quite as polished.

robmcm• 13 years ago

Perhaps that level of polished is part of what comprises "fully functioning".

gexla2• 13 years ago

It's tricky to argue labels. To me (right or wrong) platform suggests support, active development, community, backing, a reason to believe that development will continue and something you can build on. Of course, you can call platform whatever you like though.

Ghost has many (all?) of the above, and that's relatively rare in any ecosystem (PHP, Ruby, Python, whatever) for a young project. If this project can continue building momentum, then it would truly be unique in general and certainly in the JS ecosystem.

ETA: When I say tricky throwing around labels, I mean one thing can mean one thing to me and something else to you. I guess semantics would be the short word for that.

wiremine• 13 years ago

This is the firs I've heard for ghost. Here's the Kickstarter page for anyone else looking for more info:

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

antocv• 13 years ago

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.

jallardice3• 13 years ago

There's a link to the GitHub repository which I believe is all that is currently available. You can clone the repo (or download an archive of it) and install the platform from that.

oe• 13 years ago

There's also http://ghost.org/ which holds a lot of information, but blog.ghost.org doesn't link there.

rocky11383• 13 years ago

There is a link in the footer, but I'm with you on your main point.

cjbprime2• 13 years ago

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

jallardice3• 13 years ago

I wonder if there's any generally useful tech inside Ghost

One of the nicest things about it (aside from the use of node and express, which is very nice IMHO) is that it's open source so you can start looking through the code to find out.

jermaink2• 13 years ago

What would you say is the biggest difference compared to Svbtle and Medium?

From a first glimpse:

Plus: - Good design, simple to use, friendly colors. - MIT license. - Well done support forum.

Minus: - Features should be more clear. - I might be mean but when I read "Just a blogging platform", I automatically read "Just a(nother) blogging platform." - 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 "Ghost"? Maybe it has some meaning? - Git Link way too hidden.

Good job!

uptown• 13 years ago

"What would you say is the biggest difference compared to Svbtle and Medium?"

Svbtle and Medium are hosted (and as a result, controlled-by) a 3rd party. You host Ghost yourself, giving you complete control over the platform. I think a better comparison would be probably be to Wordpress.

jermaink2• 13 years ago

Got it.

rattray• 13 years ago

I'm choosing between this and Medium, and the user-facing design (at least the theme demo'd on their blog) looks similar.

I'd like to hear a comparison (though happy to throw wordpress in the consideration pool too)

nathan_long• 13 years ago

You can host Ghost yourself. You can also use their hosted service, which funds the non-profit that develops Ghost.

_mulder_• 13 years ago

'Why the name "Ghost"?'

I'm speculating wildly here, but maybe because the blogging platform becomes invisible, like a ghost. A similar approach to LaTeX for word processing. And also perhaps because of the writing theme, as in ghost writing.

pdknsk• 13 years ago

Why the name "Ghost"?

(BLO)Ghost?

marcamillion3• 13 years ago

I would love to see an easy way to publish this to gh-pages on Github.

Are the posts stored in a db or are they generated HTML?

shitduck• 13 years ago

Ghost uses SQLite by default, but the ORM allows for other databases seamlessly.

marcamillion3• 13 years ago

It's awesome that it has an ORM - but ever since I have started using Octopress, which is based on Jekyll, is the more I realize that we don't need a DB for 'just blogging'.

Plain, old, generated HTML works perfectly. Plus it is very easy to host.

If this is something you guys can implement, I would suggest looking at it.

Your hosting will be MUCH simpler, cheaper, more profitable (even though you say you are running a non-profit), general footprint will be smaller, and pages will load quicker.

That's just my $0.02.

I love what I see here, but I can't bring myself to going back to a db-powered blog from Octopress.

The day you guys implement something similar, you will have 1 more user though!

Either way....awesome execution and congrats on everything you guys have done. Love it so far.

rocky11383• 13 years ago

Looks nice. Hate to shit on their sandwich, but the main question I'm asking is "why would I use this and not Wordpress?"

hugofirth7• 13 years ago

SO many reasons, many of which boil down into the following sentiment:

- Wordpress has become a over-convoluted behemoth, with a needlessly complex structure that is not overly extensible. It is a pain to develop for/with/around.

I think everyone can appreciate the very tangible effect that Wordpress has had on the web. However, it is currently in the rather painful throws of a transition from blogging platform to CMS, and has been for quite some time.

There are number of other reasons:

- You want to avoid PHP.

- You don't need most of the feature bloat that comes along with Wordpress.

- You want to use Markdown.

- You want to try something different.

rocky11383• 13 years ago

I love php. I also love developing Wordpress themes and plugins. I'm not sure you're making a convincing argument.

Then again, Markdown would be neat to work with, but in the end I'd just rather use html if I need to markup something. And I do like trying new things.

alan_cx5• 13 years ago

With all due....

You say "SO many reasons", but at best you have 4, of which only one seems to hold any weight. Avoiding PHP is not something the average blogger would care about, bloat = features and most normal people like features, trying something different is woolly at best, which leaves wanting to use markdown. Do that many people really want to use markdown?

Are you 100% sure this isn't just an anti thing like anti MS, anti facebook, and now anti wordpress?

mbesto3• 13 years ago

So, it's novel?

Theodores• 13 years ago

Sure anyone and their pet hamster could develop for Ghost and get what they want out of it, however, clients know Wordpress, non-technical account manager type people know Wordpress, inane managers know Wordpress, developers know Wordpress, people that draw pretty pictures in Photoshop and call it design know Wordpress and even my Dad knows Wordpress. I have not heard any of them want to 'avoid PHP' (they only know it is Wordpress in most cases), they don't complain about 'feature bloat' (they don't have the full admin login, just author rights), they are happy with WYSIWYG (and haven't a clue what Markdown is) and finally, they want something they know rather than something completely different!!!

So it is down to network effects. Everyone knows Wordpress and the famous five minute install.

stephen_g2• 13 years ago

Also, the ORM appears to have a Postgres backend, which I like a lot better than being locked into MySQL like with Wordpress.

joeblau4• 13 years ago

I feel like Wordpress has too much bloat. It's a full featured CMS now and all I want to do personally is have an organized blog that I can post on. Right now Jekyll is what I've been using which works pretty well, but because ghost is not just a static site, it can do a bit more.

gexla2• 13 years ago

One thing that I can see right away that I like is working with themes. Other comments point out the WP bloat. I don't care about bloat as long as the software is easy to install and generally stays out of my way after that (the bloat stays hidden) but one area Wordpress can get to be a bit messy looking is the themes.

If Ghost is easy to theme and the templates easier to read / build / maintain then that's a big plus for me. I may not want to touch any code on the thing, but I would certainly want to do work on the templates.

nodata• 13 years ago

Anyone got a list of features? This page doesn't tell us much.

Edit: http://www.ghost.org/features/

Looks like markdown+looks stylish. Not sure what else.

moneyrich43• 13 years ago

been using this for a while

things i've noticed so far (.3.0):

- no dash yet

- no view posts by category feature

- no list top 10 most recent posts

- kind of confusing or redundant mvc abstraction

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.

good:

- easy to install

- love the editor

- love the admin

- templates are handlebars and easy

i'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!

fit2rule3• 13 years ago

Hey ... I've been playing with Ghost now for a few hours and wondering if you've gotten any new templates set up, or have tips for template tweaking? I'm a newcomer to bourbon and sass ..

moneyrich43• 13 years ago

yea ive made a few templates

i recommend just copything the casper folder and renaming it. (content/themes/casper)

make your own stylesheet and comment theirs out (it, styles, everything). theirs is screen.css.

you can comment out the ghost included {{body_class}} and {{ghost_foot}} by changing them to {{!body_class}} and {{!ghost_foot}}

after that its just 3 files, default.hbs which is a global template (so its like the html head body tags), and then they insert the body at {{body}}

the body comes from index.hbs or post.hbs, which will be index.hbs: 6 article summaries in a list with a page at the bottom. and post.hbs which will just show 1 post.

the data in the post and index hbs files (handlebars templates) has stuff like {{eachpost}} {{post}} which is all you really have to keep out of those files

dmackerman• 13 years ago

Looking at the client side code makes me wonder why people would ever use Backbone. It's so abstracted, mixes DOM manipulation into views. I should re-write it with Angular! :)

mrottenkolber4• 13 years ago

I can't take anyone seriously who uses fonts to display icons (it doesn't work when you turn off foreign fonts!)

Sadly, nowadays thats pretty much everyone. If you want me to care about you (apparently/marketwise you don't), then get your design right. Tip: Design is not looking pretty. Design is this question: Does it work?

rushabh• 13 years ago

I can't take anyone seriously who does not uses fonts to display icons,

Turn off foreign fonts (?) maybe 0.001% of web users do that.

addedlovely• 13 years ago

Um, surely that is an edge case? I haven't disabled foreign fonts, and haven't had issues from any clients either? Are there any statistics on this?

Fonts to display icons reduce HTTP overhead and scale, looking great on retina screens.

andyhmltn4• 13 years ago

I think the case for supporting retina screens + very fast load times far outweighs the amount of users that turn off foreign fonts (it baffles me why you would)

teamonkey• 13 years ago

Why would you turn off foreign fonts?

There are some very good reasons why you'd want icons in a font. For example, font rendering is well supported by all browsers and very configurable through CSS, and if the default font size is increased for accessibility reasons the icons can also scale.

hellweaver666• 13 years ago

Is disabling fonts the new disabling Javascript and/or HTML emails? Something done by overly paranoid uber-nerd types and completely ignored by 99% of typical users.

stephen_g2• 13 years ago

I feel this is a lot like how people used to object to websites that required JavaScript because they had it switched off... If you're going to use the web at all, you're probably going to need to change your setup so icon fonts work, because it's only going to get more common.

mrottenkolber4• 13 years ago

I will reply to all collectively:

Why would you turn off foreign fonts?

Because I don't want foreign fonts. They are usually either just bad (e.g. worse than my OS font) or render badly.

It's an edge case, 0.0000001%, ....

You are not downwards compatible. It's an edge case because you make it one by deciding on web "standards" by thoughtlessly applying these short-sighted idioms.

peferron• 13 years ago

It's a tradeoff, just like not supporting users on IE9- or with JS disabled.

Using sprites instead of fonts to support users with foreign fonts disabled means degrading the product for some other users. Building a polyfill means not spending the time improving something else.

Why do you consider "support everyone" to be obviously better than "build a better product for a subset of users"?

I feel like the undending debates around this issue (most often regarding JS) exist because some people on HN look at it through a business angle where #2 can make complete sense, while some others look at it through a Web ideals angle where anything but #1 is heresy.

Edit: To be fair, the Web ideals remark doesn't seem to apply to you. You rather seem to consider than being pretty is way less important than supporting more people. But why? Being pretty has been increasingly important this past decade, and especially so regarding blogs where being pretty is one of the few differentiators.

mrottenkolber4• 13 years ago

Why was I downvoted for that?

aram3• 13 years ago

It's great to see how Kickstarter helped also "stabilize" 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/community adoption. I'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/Nettuts) starts doing something similar as for Laravel [1][2][3], and provide free developer introduction to the platform.

Glad to see this, hope it will keep up the expectations.

[0] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andrewgodwin/schema-migr...

[1] http://laravel.com/

[2] http://net.tutsplus.com/tag/laravel/

[3] https://tutsplus.com/course/laravel-essentials/

BCM43• 13 years ago

I think it's the idea in general, not the specific platform. Joey Hess was able to successfully run his own crowdfunding campaign with custom written software.

https://campaign.joeyh.name/

aram3• 13 years ago

I agree about the crowdfunding idea; very often I find myself saying/attributing "Kickstarter" when I really mean "crowdfunding" :)

Thanks for the Git-Annex link - didn't know he ran a campaign on his own after doing it on Kickstarter.

matteodepalo2• 13 years ago

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.

ridruejo• 13 years ago

You can use the BitNami installers to install them anywhere, including the hosting providers you mention. BitNami also supports Discourse

matteodepalo2• 13 years ago

Wow I didn't know that, thank you!

yapcguy• 13 years ago

Digital Ocean are one of the most popular VPS hosts in the world

Where is the proof of this? Any hard data on customer account numbers or growth?

There are lots of solid VPS providers out there. I don't see why Digital Ocean gets so much hype.

pearkes• 13 years ago

Currently, they are 21st in the world for web facing computers[1]. The growth has been pretty good, too.

[1] http://trends.netcraft.com/www.digitalocean.com

nickstinemates6• 13 years ago

You can run discourse by issuing an command on any Linux host: https://index.docker.io/u/srid/discourse/

eugeneross• 13 years ago

After briefly looking over documentation, it seems that Ghost doesn't support post types like links, asides, images, etc. Or did I overlook something? If else, future implementation?

bachback• 13 years ago

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.

calibwam• 13 years ago

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?

pkrefta2• 13 years ago

Registering is for hosting a blog. Code is available on Github.

zedpm• 13 years ago

Eventually you'll be able to their hosted service, but for now when you register you just get access to a source download for self-hosting and access to their forums.

Touche6• 13 years ago

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

Anonmattymous• 13 years ago

I completely agree, if you decide to do it and need any help PM me. With something lightweight like this it would definitely be a lot better with a simple file system instead of a whole database that you need to set up and deal with. I have done something similar before in PHP, but the Ghost front end is really nice.

thecolorblue4• 13 years ago

Second on PM'ing for help. I have been interested in node.js CMS's and this has been the most promising one. I have not dug into the code yet.

erisds• 13 years ago

The default database is SQLite, which is a file and doesn't need to be setup or dealt with :)

cheshire137• 13 years ago

Just curious, why not go with Jekyll if you want something lightweight and static?

subpixel4• 13 years ago

Have you looked at prose.io?

Touche6• 13 years ago

Seems to be tied to GitHub which is not what I want.

babby4• 13 years ago

Been watching Ghost for a while and ever since I saw it get so much funding I thought to myself; with those pledged features I could do this alone, better, faster. Since then I have been sidetracked with a closed source somewhat-overlapping project but now that Ghost is out I plan to steal some ideas people actually like from it and continue building my own platform. Kinda makes me chuckle in that they got payed to do this and yet their feature set is still so underdeveloped, for a blogging platform of all things.

I think now that you've made your point I may abstract models to the point where the database can be either MariaDB or a bunch of JSON files/SQLite. Its tricky because I build databases for performance and scalability over flexibility.

To give you an idea of what I mean, Wordpress makes me cringe in the way they handle their tags, categories etc. and the sheer amount of SQL queries and joins for a simple front page. I make at most 2 queries for the front page (excluding sidebar, which would be cached), the user session authentication and the articles. I make no queries if I can help it ( Caching in node.js is so fun ). Categories are always in memory, along with user roles, settings etc.

It's really quite glorious having a readily available memory store. I'm getting around ~500 queries per second to my front page in apachebench, which would normally have about 7-10 queries to the database.

rmrfrmrf5• 13 years ago

Honestly, a better Wordpress is something that the majority of people with a reasonable understanding of web development and database design (or hey, with a NoSQL store, maybe not even that! /troll) could do in a weekend. However, as you've said, we all have other things to do, but more importantly, it's the free upgrades and transfer of liability that make Wordpress enticing. I'm sure there are plenty of developers out there (myself included) that are happy to say "there's a bug in Wordpress that we'll need to patch" vs. "there's a bug in my code that we'll need to patch".

taylorbuley4• 13 years ago

I understand a taxonomy overhaul for WordPress - one that thankfully doesn't require joins - to be "in the works." Should also allow term meta to become a reality. http://make.wordpress.org/core/2013/07/28/potential-roadmap-...

Miyamoto• 13 years ago

Your post comes off very egoistical. Ghost has actually delivered. I would hold off on your self glorification until you do the same.

prawn• 13 years ago

You laugh at them, but they actually have a product out and it's good enough that you plan to steal features/ideas rather than work out your own from scratch?

calinet62• 13 years ago

Using a database should really not be a deal-breaker... you should evaluate it on other factors.

My gripe is that it appears tied to SQLite, and I can't use Postgres. Oh well, wasn't planning on using it anyway.

tgriesser• 13 years ago

Shouldn't be tied to SQLite (the underlying query builder/orm support Postgres), it's just not "officially" supported yet.

So in theory putting in the correct connection config should allow you to use Postgres.

fractalsea• 13 years ago

I find it odd that you feel put off by the single choice of database, while also arguing that users shouldn't mind being tied to databases in general. Surely using SQLite when your setup is better suited to PostgreSQL is a less harmful trade-off than the case where files would have been better suited to your system/requirements.

gingerjoos• 13 years ago

I haven't written node code before, so correct me if I'm wrong. The package.json file indicates MySQL as an optional [1] :

    "optionalDependencies": {
        "mysql": "2.0.0-alpha9"
    },

And this guide [2] seems to indicate that PG support is possible.

[1] https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/blob/master/package.json

[2] http://www.howtoinstallghost.com/how-to-install-ghost-on-her...

jeremydw• 13 years ago

Ghost is super cool and I love the UI, but I also find that having a persistent database limits some of the portability. And, depending on what's in the database, it might mean that developers can't use their favorite tools (like Sublime Text, etc.) to author content, develop and design templates, etc.

This is a bit of a shameless plug, but I figure it's relevant to this topic. I just put up blog post introducing my new project, Grow (http://about.grow.io/blog/all-i-want-to-do-is-build-a-web-si...). Grow overlaps with Ghost in some ways, but attempts to be a full-fledged, modern file-based CMS and is not designed just for blogs alone. I've been following all the replies in this thread to get a better idea on what people are looking for, and I think I've nailed it.

Basically, the way I've architected Grow is the whole system is file-based: content is stored in Markdown or YAML files, templates are stored as Jinja2 templates, separate from the content.

When you start up a Grow server for development, essentially what amounts to a super lightweight in-memory index is created from the file structure, and that allows your site to be generated (including pages that leverage complicated queries or access content through taxonomies).

This design keeps everything incredibly portable (zero-configuration development AND zero-configuration deployment) – which is one of the values that I hold to be very important. Anyway, the project is still super young (and my blog post is light on technical details, but I'm working on it), so I'm interested in getting any early feedback.

moneyrich43• 13 years ago

disagree

the db is sqlite by default, and its stored in content/ with your themes and other stuff (?)

so you just backup your content directory ;d

pingswept2• 13 years ago

I was planning on doing this as well. If you do it, where might it appear on Github?

mradmin• 13 years ago

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've put together an example here: https://github.com/badsyntax/gruntfile

davexunit• 13 years ago

Off topic, but someone please explain to me what Grunt does that is so special? It seems like it's re-inventing Make for no good reason.

theklub• 13 years ago

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

bencollier492• 13 years ago

Hmm, isn't this name caught by trademark law in the UK? Ghost is almost certainly a trademark of Symantec; wouldn't this fall into the same trademark category?

pkrefta2• 13 years ago

Let's hope that there'll be no problems such as this and it'll solved in good spirit some day.

bencollier492• 13 years ago

We wouldn't want problems like this haunting the project in future.

stevoski• 13 years ago

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:

* "Oh, a New Zealand accent. One of us! I hope this is really awesome and I want to try this out already."

* "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."

jonahx• 13 years ago

I don't think anyone is invulnerable to this. The only (partial) salvation is to be aware of it, take it with a (big) grain of salt, and try to overcome it with factual reasoning when making decisions.

danso2• 13 years ago

"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."

Sadly, this is too common of a fallacy in judgment, and one that seems most non-fallacious on its face. But whether we want to admit it or not, sometimes output and achievements are highly impacted -- even dependent -- on the organization and institution than the individual. So someone highly successful at Apple retail, for example, may flounder at JCPenney's (http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/11/12/a-dose-of-realism-for...).

So it goes both ways. It's wrong to argue that someone who was great at once place will necessarily be great at another. And conversely, someone who's work turned out awful at one place (either by poor management or design-by-committee), may flourish in different circumstances

wmeredith• 13 years ago

"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."

Wait, what?

WordPress' backend may be a mess, but it's CMS interface is the only one I've ever trained a non-technical person on that they liked or seemed to be able to use right away. I worked at a marketing/dev shop for years and have probably trained 40-ish non-techy clients (usually small marketing teams of 3-4) on customized CMS installs. WordPress' dashboard was by far the best when it came to power/usability ratio.

taylorbuley4• 13 years ago

A lot of people feel their data is exceptional, and so meta data is where I see "custom" hurt content creation the most: Whereas WordPress has a neatly rolled meta data extensions into "Custom Fields" many CMS degrade into a morass of form fields.

People should be wary of custom built CMS UIs, not only because most people have learned a UI like WordPress or Tumblr.

wyck• 13 years ago

WP owes most of it's success to the UI, it is the very reason it became so popular. It continues to this day to sooth and empower end users, so much so that the actual users often think they are developers, that is what you call a successful interface. WP lead the way with UI more so than any platform, much like Apple, they realize the importance of UX.

If you think the UI is painful that I don't have a lot of faith in your ability to objectively judge interfaces especially in the context of history.

xdite• 13 years ago

Try Logdown http://logdown.com/demo

girvo• 13 years ago

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

spindritf• 13 years ago

What are the best practices for deploying a node.js app from git on Ubuntu behind nginx? I'm sure someone has a blog post on that but "Ghost" makes it a bit difficult to google for.

In case anyone's looking, this PPA[1] seems to come recommended and has an up-to-date node.

[1] https://launchpad.net/~chris-lea/+archive/node.js/

hippich• 13 years ago

I am using Dokku

andreypopp• 13 years ago

Which in this case would make things a little more difficult cause Ghost uses SQLite and Dokku can't deploy apps which use it because of default Node.js Heroku buildpack which prohibits SQLite usage. You can patch a buildpack though.

For example in my fork of Dokku I replaced Heroku buildpacks with plain Dockerfiles to define both a stack and a runtime dependencies — https://github.com/andreypopp/upaas

StavrosK• 13 years ago

How are you liking it? It's very handy for launching apps, for sure, but I'm wondering how you can configure services (e.g. how do I set up redis persistence or nginx directives or postgres backups?).

NathanKP• 13 years ago

This is a good guide which explains the best technique I've found, and which I'm currently using in production for the startup I work for:

http://blog.argteam.com/coding/hardening-node-js-for-product...

Basically Nginx is used as a reverse proxy to serve requests from a pool of Node.js processes, each with its own internal port. So you would set up the Node.js app to run internally on ports 8080, 8081, 8082, and 8083 for example. (If you have a quad core server this assures that under extreme load each processor can be fully utilized by one single-thread Node.js process). Then Nginx serves requests on port 80 by fetching the response from one of those four internal ports in round robbin fashion.

If one of the processes crashes due to a bug or you want to specifically restart it so that a new code update takes effect in production then Nginx will automatically remove it from the pool while it is down and then add it back when it comes back online. When you are pushing out code updates you can cycle each process one at a time to do a zero downtime deploy.

The other cool thing that you can do with Nginx reverse proxies is use the proxy_cache as a robust cache layer to almost completely remove stress from your blog under high load.

Honestly for a basic personal blog this technique probably isn't really necessary. You could just run it through Forever on port 80 with no Nginx and forget it, but if you expect tons of traffic, or if you want high 99% uptime, or if you just want to have some fun configuring a server then the technique I explained above is how you do it. It takes some fiddling to get Nginx configured properly and that tutorial I linked actually leaves out some details of the upstream server configuration but its pretty easy to figure out from the Nginx documentation.

jackweirdy• 13 years ago

If you're looking to deploy to a larger platform (AWS scale deployments) check out the JuJu charm for node apps - https://juju.ubuntu.com/docs/howto-node.html

Ethan_Mick• 13 years ago

I used this[1], and it worked great. Setup my blog in 30 minutes or so.

[1] http://0v.org/installing-ghost-on-ubuntu-nginx-and-mysql/

nickstinemates6• 13 years ago

I personally use Docker

sw00• 13 years ago

Anyone remember Specter? Very simple blogging engine with elasticsearch backend.

http://brislink.github.io/specter/

I don't think it's out to replace Wordpress like Ghost is trying to do though.

dschiptsov4• 13 years ago

Let'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?)

babby4• 13 years ago

But it's not. I just launched a website that handles many taxing db queries over multiple pages and I'm able to achieve ~500 requests per second on a single worker with some simple memory caching. PHP is a waste of resources in the proper sense of the terminology, thus this Ghost stuff is fundamentally better.

dschiptsov4• 13 years ago

Everything, even Rails, looks great compared to PHP.))

aram3• 13 years ago

You forgot the close the </stupidity> tag, so it doesn't affect other members.

dschiptsov4• 13 years ago

Oh, sure. Under this very tag I could mention that using JS outside a browser, especially on the apps that by its nature should be a tiny layer on top of an OS's services is an idea with, ironically, related to another great one - Desktop Java Apps, and both of there great ideas are somehow appear as an reflection of one another in a grotesque mirror. They never works as expected.)

There is no justification of using any VM for an (cache-able) I/O bound apps. Why do they need nginx as a front-end if NodeJs so great?)

Could the whole engine be implemented as a few nginx's modules using another ready modules?)

Oh, sorry, I forgot to close the tag.

cjbprime2• 13 years ago

I don't understand. As far I've seen, NodeJS is faster than Django/Rails in approximately every scenario, and that's a large part of the reason people are switching to it.

So either you're confused about the relative performance of Node against the other most popular frameworks, or you dislike all of the most popular frameworks and have your own preference for a webapp that you're failing to mention, and that most people disagree with you on the merits of. Which is it?

dschiptsov4• 13 years ago

That's not my case, it is a bit more complicated.)

When one asks yourself what other people in industry are doing, one would notice that, say, Facebook resorted to translate PHP into C++ and compile it into a static binary, that Google is making huge static binaries (who said Lisp images?!) from the very beginning, and other people are trying, for some not obvious reasons, make a huge blob inside a JVM.

There are a lot of reason and logic behind products like Varnish Cache, which is, basically, a thin layer on top of an OS, the way how such apps, perhaps, should be implemented.

Finally, very clever people at Google have noticed that there are much better ways to create huge static binaries than C++ and now we have Golang, which is, probably, the direction a sane person should look at for making yet another blog engine.)

My bet is that if I search github for a blog app written in go, each one of it will beat in terms of resource utilization and performance any Node-based app, for reasons that authors of nginx or Varnish Cache or Google/Facebook engineers took into account.

So, i

termain• 13 years ago

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't understand this part:

"you have, in the case of Content that includes computer code, accurately categorized and/or described the type, nature, uses and effects of the materials, whether requested to do so by Ghost Foundation or otherwise"

There's also the combination of reserving the right to take down any content for any reason. That's fine for a free service, but unacceptable for a paid one, particularly one that claims that it needn't give refunds.

ElongatedTowel3• 13 years ago

Well, I tried taking a look at it, but the setup is kind of funky.

* [edit] Download link seems to have been fixed.

* Cloned the repo instead and set everything up. Cloning the submodule for the theme didn't work due to some rights issue. Cloned it by hand then.

* Setup was pretty easy otherwise, even though I'm using the development version.

* [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.

* No direct link to the interface on the blog index (or am I blind?). Have to add /ghost by hand.

* Rest seems pretty nice, though barebone. No comment system, why? The only benefit to static blogs that is left is the online editor.

rmrfrmrf5• 13 years ago

I just downloaded the Bitnami stack instead of going through the login process. Bitnami seems to have added some bloat to themselves, however: they used to provide you with a straight VM image; now they have an installer and what seems to be a self-contained VM. The cynical part of me assumes that something in this stack is phoning home and perhaps making me part of some evil botnet, but hopefully not ;).

ElongatedTowel3• 13 years ago

While signing up is mentioned several times on their page it doesn't seem to be required in any way to run your own version. I hope the broken download is just a bug. Signing up just so you can download the package would be pretty annoying.

fit2rule3• 13 years ago

I had a different funky experience. I at first struggled, then paid attention to what I was doing, and then got it set up and running quite smoothly.

Path A: Warts and Brew: * Mac OSX 10.9 * latest homebrew

    1. brew install npm && brew install node.js
    2. gem install bourbon && gem install sass
    3. Then: Do the Installation / Setup instructions here:

https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.m...

... because: you have to install some ruby templates and such .. please note that you should also have done 'gem instal sass' step above, before you do step #3 ..

I found it works quite well if you get through that setup. I'm impressed enough to have been using it as an app for the last day or so .. its got a nice interface. I'd love to have time to hack up more templates.

Plan B: The easy route: vagrant Well, another great use for vagrant. Works very smoothly as well: https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost-Vagrant

johndunnu• 13 years ago

Does Homebrew work on 10.9? Have you seen any problems?

ElongatedTowel3• 13 years ago

It uses a similar build process to what you and I are already used to, so in a way it is indeed easy. Despite that the git version is not something the average user should use.

The download link seems to have been fixed so I'll take a look at the packaged version. I reckon it requires nothing more than unpacking and installing the dependencies.

Of course there are installers as well which probably require no user input at all.

akbar501• 13 years ago

If you're developing software that needs to be installed, then please read the parent post. Too many software install guides are pointers (such as install x, or install y), but fail to provide step-by-step instructions. And this results in people finding your install "funky", or whatever. But not easy, painless, simple...

For all of its flaws, documentation is an area that Microsoft does very well. IMO, many companies and projects would be better served by step-by-step guides.

The following are the commands I used to setup Ghost on Ubuntu Linux 13.04 x64. The only assumption below is that you have git setup already.

# switch to root so you don't have to sudo repeatedly

sudo -i

# Install node (user private install).

cd; mkdir packages; cd packages; wget http://nodejs.org/dist/v0.10.20/node-v0.10.20-linux-x64.tar....; gzip -dc node-v0.10.20-linux-x64.tar.gz | tar xf -

echo 'PATH=~/packages/node-v0.10.20-linux-x64/bin/:$PATH' >> ~/.profile; source ~/.profile

which node

# Install ruby and gems

apt-get install ruby

gem install sass; gem install bourbon

# Install Python

apt-get install python python-virtualenv

easy_install Pygments

# Clone Ghost (assumption: you already have git installed/setup)

git clone git@github.com:TryGhost/Ghost.git

cd Ghost

git submodule update --init

npm install -g grunt-cli

npm install

grunt init

npm start

# Open Ghost

Open a browser to http://localhost:2368/ to view the blog or open http://127.0.0.1:2368/ghost/ to view the admin UI.

nickstinemates6• 13 years ago

Or you can just use my Dockerfile[1]

1: https://github.com/keeb/Ghost/blob/add-dockerfile/Dockerfile

r0muald2• 13 years ago

It would be neat if there were import/export plugins for WordPress. Import plugins for Jekyll are a killer feature IMHO (can't really force myself to accept using Disqus for comments though, which makes me like Ghost).

r0muald2• 13 years ago

Just noted that there is a WordPress to Ghost plugin: http://wordpress.org/plugins/ghost/ and that you can export a JSON dump of your Ghost blog from e.g. http://localhost:2368/ghost/debug/ (not otherwise linked from the admin).

NKCSS2• 13 years ago

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'm not really tempted to continue fiddling.

15923 error sqlite3@2.1.16 install: `node build.js` 15923 error `cmd "/c" "node build.js"` 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 "C:\\Program Files\\nodejs\\\\node.exe" "C:\\Program Files\\nodejs\\node_modules\\npm\\bin\\npm-cli.js" "install" "--production" 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 ]

spleeder• 13 years ago

Update Node to the latest stable version and you should have no more problems.

NKCSS2• 13 years ago

That did the trick :) Might be good to add some pre-condition where you tell the user to update to a supported version of node before attempting to install :)

yankoff• 13 years ago

How people find energy to create yet another blogging platform.

zenmaker• 13 years ago

What's so fascinating about the momentum that gathered behind Ghost and it's funding campaign was that they selling the feature-set in part, but maybe in even larger part, the fact that it wasn't WP. My sense was that people backed it as much out of a sense of "sending a message to David" as they did wanting something better.

kh_hk2• 13 years ago

I've been looking forward to this release. Not because I want the blogging platform, but to take a look.

In the node world, it'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.

Here, we got a node express backend with handlebars as the templating engine, defined grunt tasks, some unit tests and backbone on the client.

I am really looking forward to keep diving as the project progresses!

2mur• 13 years ago

Check out issacs npm-www[0] too. I found it helpful for trying to learn how to get things done sans express.

[0] https://github.com/isaacs/npm-www

babby4• 13 years ago

I used this a bit :). I think everyone should make their own frameworks from scratch so they know exactly how it all works.

By the end of it you might, like me, just continue with your own framework (when you can of course).

59nadir• 13 years ago

Here, we got a node express backend with handlebars as the templating engine, defined grunt tasks, some unit tests and backbone on the client.

JS BINGO!

Sorry, I couldn't resist. I'm something inbetween disgusted and amused by this soup of JS libraries and buzz words. I feel like I'm gonna vomit while laughing.

kh_hk2• 13 years ago

Yes, libraries have names. Names are meant to represent and be used to refer to these libraries. The same could apply to any web project in any language:

Here, we got a python flask backend with mustache as the templating engine, defined fabric tasks, some unit tests and backbone on the client. CPU sensitive tasks are handled by Celery or RQ, on Redis or RabbitHQ.

Maybe you would prefer:

Here, we got <Insert your language here> , with no templates, some bash scripts to build the project, no unit tests and a half-assed mess of javascript spaghetti code tied together on the client.

I must ask, if you do build websites, how do you (or if you do):

- Use a framework

- Use templates

- Minify and build assets

- Test your code

It's been many years since we have moved from frameworks that do everything, to small libraries that do one thing and to it well, sometimes opinionated or not. For me, choice is better.

It is always a good pass time to look how people build their projects, compare it on how you are doing it, and decide if you can learn something from that. I might be wasting my time, and your comment was just an opportunity to bash on a language or community. I could not care less, as I have no cards on this game. Just use whatever works for you.

AhtiK• 13 years ago

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

postfuturist• 13 years ago

No one expects an app written for OSX 10.4 Tiger to work on OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion.

That's truly sad.

danso2• 13 years ago

Why is that? I think you're misled by OSX's numbering system, which uses .x where other operating systems might use whole numbers. In fact, I misestimated myself...I thought each dot-version represented a year, with Tiger being 4 years old.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Tiger

However, Tiger is actually 8 years old. I don't think obsolesence in eight years is too horrible.

Finster• 13 years ago

Will Symantec's trademark lawyers be a threat here?

guynamedloren• 13 years ago

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

philliphaydon• 13 years ago

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.

madradavid• 13 years ago

After 30 minutes all i can say is

Build failed [sqlite3]: 1 npm ERR! weird error 1 npm ERR! not ok code 0

leke2• 13 years ago

I've installed ghost to my raspberry pi and have...

ghost@0.3.2 start /var/www/servers/www..dyndns.org/pages/ghost
node index

Ghost is running...

Listening on 127.0.0.1:2368

Url configured as: http://my-ghost-blog.com

Ctrl+C to shut down

127.0.0.1:2368 gives me an unable to establish a connection error (btw, I'm ssh-ing into my pi on the lan).

and also 127.0.0.1:2368/ghost where I am meant to access my admin account setup.

Any idea what went wrong?

leke2• 13 years ago

If anyone finds this on google, and is having the same problem...

Because I was ssh-ing into the pi, in the config file, I had to change the localhost address to my pi's address on the lan. Then access it via that lan address with the suggested port.

lambda3• 13 years ago

Taking a look at their "idea" page, I found myself nodding along with most of their bullet points (or shrugging and saying "not exactly my preference, but I can see why you'd want that"), until I hit:

  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.

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?

In the real world, people need compatibility more than they need whatever cleanup you'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.

I'm so sick of trendy "modern" frameworks like Rails that break compatibility every 5 minutes, and listing breaking compatibility as a major feature is a huge turnoff.

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?

karolisd• 13 years ago

Especially for a young project, I think this is ok. You don't want it to be set in stone too early. Once there is an established ecosystem around Ghost, there will be a lot more pressure to keep it stable.

benologist• 13 years ago

Even better than that is pressure to keep addons/plugins/whatever up to date.

I think there's some good precedence for that with Firefox who (still?) deliberately broke all their extension compatibilities on every release, and contrary to that Wordpress who've led to a fully automated exploit ecosystem.

RandallBrown2• 13 years ago

How long do you expect upgrades to work before a break in compatibility?

The difference between 10.4 and 10.8 is seven years. That doesn't seem like an outrageous amount of time to break compatibility.

rustynails• 13 years ago

My last computer retired - 1 month ago. It was more than 5 years old, running Windows XP. XP is still very popular and I would expect it to still be supported and it's 12 years old. Where did you get your 7 year magic number from?

Amadou• 13 years ago

How long do you expect upgrades to work before a break in compatibility?

Forever? At least the linux kernel has an explicit goal of never breaking userspace. That doesn't mean other parts of userspace don't break themselves, but the linux kernel has as a development goal to never break binary compatibility for userspace.

https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75

ChikkaChiChi• 13 years ago

If you are coding against a well documented and thorough API, why should the year matter?

joeblau4• 13 years ago

You must not own any Apple products. I have friends with the first Macbook Pro who can't use OSX 10.7+.

alwillis• 13 years ago

Should Apple not have gone to a 64-bit operating system because of hardware like the first MacBook Pro, with a 32-bit processor and RAM that maxed out at 2GB?

nailer2• 13 years ago

In the real world, people need compatibility more than they need whatever cleanup you're able to do by breaking compatibility.

Time and time again, rolling software has proven to be more secure than static releases. A plugin from five years ago that hasn't been maintained in that time is probably going to hurt you a lot.

ericd• 13 years ago

You say this, but I can't remember the last time an old unmaintained but reliable plugin has burned me. Likewise with old extensions and libraries.

lambda3• 13 years ago

Rolling software is better achieved with better backwards compatibility than it is with constantly breaking API changes.

When you have constantly breaking API changes, and then someone has an essential plugin that's unmaintained, then they're a lot more likely to stay with your old, buggy, insecure base package, rather than finding someone who knows how to update their plugin (remember, most users aren't programmers, and most have installed plugins for a reason).

What you do is try to minimize the API surface that plugins have so it's easy to maintain backwards compatibility, and minimize the impact that older plugins can have by keeping them reasonably well isolated.

jeffreyjflim4• 13 years ago

A plugin from five years ago that hasn't been maintained in that time is probably going to hurt you a lot.

Unless it just does some simple, or basic thing. In which case, you're still hurt. But in a different way....

comex• 13 years ago

For that matter, most apps written for Tiger should work on Mountain Lion, with the important exception of PowerPC apps - but that was a matter of maintaining library support for an entire architecture, and anything written for the Intel release of Tiger is fine.

The other way around is different, of course, as as a huge number of new APIs have been added since then.

aghost• 13 years ago

More than $300,000 was raised on Kickstarter for Ghost, so after seeing this public release of Ghost I was really surprised. It is so simple, I could have paid a developer $500 to make it with more features.

The Ghost admin panel doesn't allow editing themes, the post doesn't have buttons that allow you to quickly format posts, there are no SEO options/plugins, there is no theme editor that allows editing of themes, no sidebars, no multi-user creation, no e-mail to post, etc. Too many features are missing and this is very simple. WordPress is better, there just is no debate on this right now.

mynameisvlad• 13 years ago

I'm pretty sure that's actually the point of Ghost. To strip away all the features that make WP bloated, and bring it back to simple blogs.

doppel• 13 years ago

This is the first public release, to get feedback. They already stated (on their own blog) that an improvied admin panel, themes, plugins, etc. will come but it will take some time.

Also, we are talking ~37k lines of code, not exactly something you can write in a week or two for $500.

rmrfrmrf5• 13 years ago

Compared to WordPress, which touts backward compatibility as a strength, yet still manages to break itself in some way, shape, or form with every new release?

zapt02• 13 years ago

Me and everyone I have talked to in the WP dev community have exactly the opposite experience.

I have used plugins that haven't been updated for four years without any issues.

lambda3• 13 years ago

I'm not necessarily comparing to WordPress. What I'm saying is that they should be going in the other direction; towards better backwards compatibility.

Of course, one way to achieve this is less reliance on add-ons, so you have less API surface to expose. Having a usable WordPress install relies so heavily on add-ons that it's kind of pointless to consider WordPress alone.

r0s2• 13 years ago

That's hilarious, it's a major feature I want from a blog and I came to the comments to advocate. It's one of the best things about Drupal, for instance.

I want a frozen codebase that only worries about critical security updates.

In the real world, you will break your site by adding new plugins every few months. The site will break. I get a stable codebase and I sit on it.

Development causes bugs! Milestone releases are what I want.

In the real world, people need compatibility more than they need whatever cleanup you're able to do by breaking compatibility.

Here's the thing: if you're a user that needs compatibility don't upgrade! (not an option with most blogs) If you're always adding new functionality and plugins to your blog, things will break. If your business needs constant new web technology updates, use a real CMS and fix them when they break. They will break, they always break.

vidarh• 13 years ago

This is the reason why my own blog is static files of Markdown for the content, combined with a tiny blog engine, all in the same git repo - I just don't want to deal with the pain of some upgrade suddenly breaking stuff I've come to depend on.

jeffreyjflim4• 13 years ago

I'd be curious - what do u use, and why? I've been meaning to look into getting my own blog restarted, but just haven't gotten down to the question of which static site generator to use.

neya• 13 years ago

Nope, this is exactly what happened to Wordpress. As a senior Wordpress developer who deserted the platform after giving up, I can safely comment on your views:

#Supporting older versions is a pain. Supporting all features in older versions AND newer versions to work together is an even bigger pain. Example: Wordrpress.

#Compatibility for older version leads to bloated code, with too many legacy variables, too many points of failure. Example: Wordpress.

#Evolution of any software requires that it discards old ideologies and embraces the newer ones. The ones that don't do, tend to drift away from the main goals. Example: Wordpress.

Wordpress was started with the exact same intention as Ghost and yet, what you are left with now is a half-baked unstable CMS, and a half-baked blogging platform that breaks old plugins with each upgrade.

If you want to embrace progress, then you must embrace C.H.A.N.G.E. And this is not just for software.

jeffreyjflim4• 13 years ago

Wow. An actual critique of Rails??? +1!!!

nickstinemates6• 13 years ago

It took a bit of effort as the code is unstable, but I'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.

I also have an instance up and running[2] if you want to play with it. Messing it up doesn't matter to me as I will just docker run a new one. Have fun.

Username: nstinemates@gmail.com

Password: demodemodemo

1: https://github.com/keeb/Ghost/blob/add-dockerfile/Dockerfile

2: http://stinemat.es:49429/ghost/

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.

Link updated.

illyism• 13 years ago

Using "nick" as username gives me: "invalid e-mail".

nickstinemates6• 13 years ago

ah - nstinemates@gmail.com is the login then. I'll edit.

mrjatx• 13 years ago

Seems like they changed it again

nickstinemates6• 13 years ago

Oh well. At this point I'll just point to the Dockerfile and say run that :) It takes less than a minute!

Or if you want a private instance I will make no guarantees about just send me a note. I'll be happy to provide it on a subdomain of your chosing.

andybak• 13 years ago

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.

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

brenfrow• 13 years ago

Ghost got launched to the public, but how come I didn't get an email after signing up on there list. Seems like that would be an important place to make an announcement.

beshrkayali• 13 years ago

"too many blogging platforms, not that many quality content providers."

officialjunk• 13 years ago

anyone do a security audit?

lobo_tuerto• 13 years ago

A link from the project's homepage to the source code in github would be great.

adamtulinius• 13 years ago

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).

tonilin• 13 years ago

I see many user have some hard time setting up the Node.js / npm environment before being able to get Ghost up and running.

I would expect the editor of Logdown much better to use. It reads Github Flavored Markdown, has code highlighting, drag & drop image upload. And it's an online service, so you don't need to deal with the server stuffs. Much easier to use.

http://logdown.com/demo

dingdingdang• 13 years ago

What is it with web pages / 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

Ghost Launches to The Public

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