5 Reasons why I chose Ghost to Build a Self Hosted Website

The Self Hosting community seems to love static site generators but I ain't got time for that. I can blame my age (40) and use the excuse I'm getting old and need visual references, buttons and pretty UI's right? There are forks out there for a static version of Ghost but you will sacrifice many features if you go that route.

I needed something like Wordpress that's not Wordpress because Wordpress (in my opinion) becomes sluggish when adding just a few plug-ins. Besides, like Daniel Tiger says, "You have to try new things because they might taste good!". Yes, I know all about these cartoons because I have 2 young kids 😎

Ghost Back-end Design

Ghost has a very well designed back-end that is straight to the point. It's easy to navigate and you don't get lost in the menus.

Content creation is so Easy!

Adding content using Ghost is actually fun. It has built in widgets you can choose from to make your articles look very professional. You can even create your own "snippets' to be dropped into your content any time.

Ghost loads incredibly fast

Ghost is built on Node.js technology stack and is very light weight giving it a snappy response when loading pages. Go ahead, browse our site and see for yourself. Our pages load in just over half a second. That's 500 milliseconds!

Ghost saves me valuable time

The Ghost blogging platform is very efficient. I wanted a platform that would allow me to create content quickly and easily. These days time is not on my side so finding a platform like Ghost to write content was a life saver.

Ghost is free and Open Source!

Ghost is OSS or Open Source Software. Heck, their business model is all about how they are Open Source.

We're a proud non-profit organisation building open source technology for journalism.

Ghost is well maintained by workhorse developers

Ghost is very actively maintained with a Docker image making it easy to install on any OS. Updating it is as simple as recreating the Docker container keeping all of your files in tact.

Ghost customization seems easy

Customizing Ghost is a walk in the park. They have multiple free themes that are clean and elegant to choose from right in the dashboard. There are also several premium themes out there that you can buy. Noted uses Dashi from Biron Themes but be ready to shell out a bag for a good one like this! But it's worth it in my opinion.

Simply choose a theme and click the "use theme" button to install it to your system. From there you can use your favorite file editor to make more advanced modifications. I personally use Filebrowser to navigate my file system and make any changes I want.

Final Notes and Thoughts

I cannot praise Ghost enough for how awesome this software really is. In my opinion it is the best Wordpress alternative you can use.

Ghost has grown on me over the last year that I have been using it. I loved it from the get go but today I am proud to be running Noted on the Ghost platform. But hey, don't take my word for it! If you are thinking about starting a blog or website and you want a good self hosted solution with a banging reputation, Ghost is my recommendation!