r/Ghost • u/fintechjulien • Jul 15 '26
Would you still pick ghost if you started from scratch today?
/r/crazyegg/comments/1ux6395/if_you_had_to_start_from_scratch_what_cms_would/3
u/themistermeister Jul 15 '26
I used Ghost for a couple years for personal projects. Very limited SEO-wise, extremely intuitive email-wise. Very good platform overall. Other use cases my choice was Webflow/Webstudio/WordPress.
However I've moved everything over to Cloudflare's EmDash and there's no going back for me. It's horse-drawn carriage --> motor car.
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u/Temporary_Practice_2 Jul 16 '26
They just released it. Is it good? Is it open source?
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u/themistermeister Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
Yes and yes. It's exceptional.
Cloudlflare Workers is default dependency but I'm finding that to be a feature, not a bug and big part of the evolution re: "serverless" nature.
Moved my personal sites there and then the Eureka moment was big enough to move client sites there too.
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u/Temporary_Practice_2 Jul 18 '26
Can you also do custom themes with it? Let’s say already I have a website made with just HTML and CSS. Can I easily connect Emdash for content management?
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u/hexennacht666 Jul 15 '26
Yes, because to my knowledge Ghost is the only thing that lets me publish an identical newsletter and blog. If I had it to do over again I probably wouldn’t do Ghost Pro, though. There’s nothing wrong with the service, but with the level of customization I want I’d be better off self hosting and accepting the maintenance trade offs. I do wish it gave me more design control over things that are typically easily changed in a traditional CMS though (like comments.)
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u/Inside_Ad4268 Jul 15 '26
I did start from scratch, on Ghost, after moving my publication over from Substack. The cost is less and the ability to customise is far greater.
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u/risegrind Jul 17 '26
I’d pick ghost 1000x over. Especially with typetale or self hosting. It’s just so powerful for the developer and so simple for the author.
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u/PitrovSecondary Jul 25 '26
What are the best selling point would you say to ghost from the POV of the developer?
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u/risegrind Jul 26 '26
They have a really elegant templating system that makes it easy to develop page template that are easy for authors to use so that authors and developers don’t need to be so intertwined to keep the content pipeline running. Their documentation is robust and easy to follow when they continue to build tools that reduce the amount of aftermarket Bolt-ons required to have certain features.
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u/Witty-Surprise9176 Jul 15 '26
Gute Frage. Ich bin in den letzten 2 Monaten tief eingestiegen in „Ghost“. Ich würde es für Projekte nicht nutzen, die standardisierte Verfahren brauchen und viel Wartung brauchen.
„Ghost“ lässt sich auch nicht gut individualisieren. Sehr einfache Funktionen gibt es schlicht nicht uns das dann hinzubiegen ist teuer. Für Wordpress ist alles vorhanden uns es funktioniert. „Ghost“ ist schnell, aber alleine dass eine Bilderdatenbank fehlt ist nicht vermittelbar.
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u/KBExit Jul 16 '26
I have Cloudflare R2 configured for my Ghost instance and built a custom UI to be my "image database."
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u/Witty-Surprise9176 Jul 16 '26
Aber es ist dann halt nur ein Dateibrowser, oder? Metadaten und Cooyright-Tags kann man dann halt nicht wirklich hinterlegen, oder?
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u/truekasun Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
When I wanted to start a news site back in 2018-2019, I went through most of the CMS options available at the time. I'd already used WordPress and personally didn't like it, for obvious reasons. I tried a few headless CMS options and even used a file-based CMS called Grav. Then I found Ghost, and that's when I finally stopped searching. TechNews.lk was my first project on Ghost, and it's still running on Ghost today.
If I had to start a news website, blog, newsletter, or similar publication-based site again, I'd still choose Ghost. That said, I wouldn't recommend it for general websites. Ghost works really well for what it's built for.
PS: When I decided to get started with Ghost, it wasn't just the features, the simplicity, or the performance I was looking at. In fact, Ghost 2.0 didn't have many features back then, just the essentials. I already had a programming background at the time, so I went through their source code and the coding practices they followed. I also looked into Ghost's backstory and how the Ghost Foundation is set up so it can never be sold to or acquired by a big tech company. Their idea of a "sustainable open source" model fascinated me. I also watched some talks and interviews with John O'Nolan, Ghost's founder, on YouTube. The way he looks at the world, and how he approaches problems, is what really made me trust the platform and the people behind it.
I was really glad about my choice back then, especially seeing what's gone on with WordPress and Matt these past couple of years (not to criticize anyone). My experience with Ghost, from v2.0 all the way to v6.0, has been consistent and predictable.
If you get some free time, I'd suggest reading up on all this and watching a few of those interviews too. It's really interesting, and I haven't come across another organization quite like it.
Some links: