My Thoughts on Ghost so Far

Two weeks ago, I decided to make the switch from WordPress to Ghost as my blogging platform. For me it was a figuratively big jump as I have been using WordPress for years and hadn't really thought of switching to any other platform.

For me, it was also a challenge to figure out enough about Node.js to be able to set up and configure my blog with Ghost. I ended up getting it up and running on my development server, played around with it, worked on porting my theme over, and finally decided I liked it enough to switch over.

I'm still playing around with it, though not as much now that it's stable. The only thing I'm trying to get working is the 404 page. Whenever I try to add my custom error page, the site constantly gives me a 503 error. One day, I'll figure this out!

I really like the writing tool. I'm still getting used to the markdown syntax, but I love the simplicity of it. It's also nice because you can mix in HTML code with it as well to get the additional features you miss with markdown. You can just start writing and not think twice about it.

I also like the overall simplicity of the platform itself. Not to knock WordPress, but there is a lot of functionality there that is not really needed for a blog. That doesn't mean that it is a bad thing as some sites could definitely benefit from the added features, but for my needs, Ghost provides all the functionality I need.

One feature that I'm waiting for Ghost to implement is scheduled posting. I would like to be able to schedule a post for the future which I was able to do with WordPress, but not with Ghost. That said, this does seem to be in the feature list for Ghost so I'm hopeful I'll see it in the next release.

I would also like to see archives functionality. I do miss the ability to view a specific month or year's posts which doesn't seem to be available currently, but it might be available in a later release.

Overall I'm quite happy with my decision to switch over to Ghost. It seems to be a solid platform that works great for me. If you're considering it, I'd highly recommend giving it a shot.