Ghost CMS: Giant Killer?

What started out as a fictional WordPress fork has since evolved into a possible contender for the WordPress blogging crown.

John O’Nolan, a WordPress specialist who has built WordPress sites since 2005 and represented the WordPress UI Group among others, was growing mildly frustrated with how WordPress was no longer a blogging platform and more a complete platform.

While not anti-WordPress (in fact the opposite) he created a fictional manifesto on a potential platform that would focus specifically on blogging. This was originally a blog post for his readers and mostly himself, but once he started receiving emails asking ‘when will it be released’, he decided to set the wheels in motion.

Ghost mutated into a Kickstarter campaign in May 2013 that was tremendously successful. Of the £25,000 goal, over £195,000 was raised. Clearly John O’Nolan had realised a niche in the market. Since then, the official Ghost site has launched and is on the way to be a fully fledged hosted or self-hosted option.

Who is Ghost CMS for?

Ghost is predominantly a blogging platform. While WordPress has dominated the market for many bloggers, there has been an increase in the amount of blog writers who have been vocal about WordPress losing sight of the blogging platform. Whether or not there is any truth in the matter, Ghost looks likely to take a lot of the attention away from WordPress. That is, if it delivers as set out in the original proposal.

Ghost CMS is intended for writers who wish to write and not code. One of the problems John O’Nolan (among many others) faced was the amount of clutter and jumping from screen to screen to add or edit content.

When logging into WordPress, the writer is bombarded by a dashboard full of information. While useful, the majority of the time it doesn’t need to be seen at a glance. The Ghost dashboard is designed purely for your needs – allowing you to customise the appearance and functionality.

As well as the dashboard, to create a new post can sometimes be a drawn out process. When a user is adding content to a page or post, they are essentially ‘going in blind’ as they aren’t entirely sure how the page will look. Sure they can edit the text, but in order to get a preview, you need to jump to another screen. This has been rectified in Ghost as you can see a preview of the content within the same screen.

For many writers, the Markdown language has been the most useful. This method makes sense for many so Ghost applies those rules and you can edit content in Markdown with the preview on the same screen as mentioned before.

Ghost is currently available to download from the official Ghost site. At the time of writing, while you can download Ghost CMS to be used on your existing server (with certain configurations), their self-hosted options are not yet in force. For early adopters, this is a good chance to get your copy of Ghost CMS to install on your existing server to learn the ins and outs.

In order to gain access, you will require an account. Thankfully this is simply a username and password affair that allows you to download the software. As can be expected, there is already a marketplace where you can download themes – either for free or at a premium. Even though its early days, there is already quite the choice already available.

At the time of writing, Ghost currently has had over 88,000 downloads since the public release in October. Bearing in mind this is a new platform, Ghost CMS genuinely has a lot of potential and is garnering a great deal of interest.

For the time being, head over to the site, sign up and download the latest release (currently 0.3) and follow the excellent installation documentation. Ghost CMS is aimed for the blogging market but there is the possibility that it may develop into a fully fledged CMS like WordPress. WordPress too started out as a blogging platform that is now the most popular CMS with the largest market share. Whether Ghost CMS will follow, it is uncertain, but for the time being looks like a [blogging] giant killer.