by sareiodata on 10/22/19, 12:11 PM with 112 comments
by johnonolan on 10/22/19, 12:56 PM
I know the audience here is generally more interested in technical details and reasons for why this took longer than 1 weekend to build. So I'll share a few more relevant details absent from the marketing copy:
- The new membership system is effectively just an email database with JWT based authentication. Two cool things about this: You can import any CSV of emails and that's now a user database of people who can log in, and 2: not storing passwords at all is pretty great.
- New billing features are a deep integration w/ Stripe Billing API, which works with your API keys, not via Stripe Connect, so there's no middleman. Ghost can't add any fees on transactions, and volume doesn't flow through our Stripe account in any way - so it remains completely decentralised without a bottleneck. The significant part of that is: If Ghost the company were to ever go away, your site/billing/everything would keep working as normal. Doesn't depend on us.
- All our APIs and Webhooks have been continually improved to the point where Ghost is now the most popular (at least by Github stars, the fruit of life) open source headless CMS out there. Also a new Github Action for CI/CD of Ghost themes makes that whole process a lot less painful
"What's the point of this, why not just use [x]" Because [x] is some combination of: closed source, centralised, written in decade old procedural PHP, or has some sort of UI which no non-developer wants to go anywhere near. We try to sit at the juncture of these things with a decentralised product, easy to run with a managed service, built with tech developers don't hate, and a UI that people who create content really love.
Also: Something about Postgres
On a serious note, thanks for all the support. Ghost launched on HN and it was that initial boost that got everything started. I'll be hanging out in the comments here throughout the day.
by EnderMB on 10/22/19, 2:14 PM
Obviously, things have changed a lot since then, and to be honest I never really kept much of an eye on Ghost until two people I used to work with started working for Ghost. Now, Ghost is being pushed as a headless CMS, and seems heavily aligned to the JAM stack.
From what I've seen and heard, this looks like a fantastic release and you should all be proud of this milestone, and just how far Ghost has come. With that being said, there's a niggling thought in my head that won't go away.
What's to stop Ghost from becoming WordPress v2?
by praveenweb on 10/22/19, 12:59 PM
I like that they are now moving towards static site JAMStack approach, driven by APIs rather than the current SSR model. This lets anybody to customise their themes with the language / framework of choice and generating static builds that can be cached for improved loading times.
by eugenekolo on 10/22/19, 2:41 PM
I am now planning on moving towards something more static and simpler. Ghost started as a simpler alternative to WordPress, but slightly more powerful than Hugo/Jekyll/etc. It now seems to just be a WordPress clone written in JS instead of PHP. It's still fine and works well... but, I can't see a reason to use it versus WordPress and its lost roots to its simplicity.
I will probably be migrating to Jekyll for easier self hosting and hacking. Perhaps I'll stick with Ghost... but, I'm starting to become weary of "commercial open source" products. Self hosting is becoming harder and harder... it's in their best interest to make you buy the managed solution. It looks like Ghost has transitioned to a product for media corps, in that sense it looks good and I'd use it. For personal usage, I can't recommend it anymore.
by bovermyer on 10/22/19, 2:07 PM
This, from my experience as a developer and ops engineer for a newspaper.
by therealmarv on 10/22/19, 1:07 PM
One thing I don't like is that the membership api seems deeply integrated with Stripe only. That's okay for a start but in many countries in this world Stripe is not available (for me it's the new PayPal. E.g. I'm based in Cyprus and Stripe will not work here although it's EU) and I would welcome a better flexibility or plugin system for other payment providers:
https://github.com/TryGhost/Members/tree/797bab5d9218d7796f0...
Are there any plans for that? Do you think it is easy to integrate other payment providers in future?
UPDATE: ok, I've seen your website FAQ https://ghost.org/docs/members/faq/#can-i-use-other-payment-... I will not support a one payment gateway blog membersite. Sorry Ghost.
Stripe censorship excludes basically (beside regions) also many topics. Thinking about writing about intimate topics, erotica or health? Good luck in using Stripe with that.
by nickjj on 10/22/19, 1:07 PM
In the article it writes "all whilst operating as an independent non-profit organisation releasing open source software.".
But this is right before talking about generating $5,000,000 in customer revenue and giving away 0% of the business.
So when you're a non-profit, what happens with that $5,000,000 of business generated revenue? How much of a salary do you give yourself? Can you even give yourself a salary if you label yourself as a non-profit? What makes paying yourself a salary as a non-profit different than a regular business?
Whenever I read sentences like that, it makes me very suspicious. Whenever I see a Ghost blog post talking about the product it always feels like they try to bring maximum attention to being a non-profit in a way that is supposed to be less evil than a profitable business but then you talk about millions of dollars of "business revenue" and I never understood how it works.
by fortran77 on 10/22/19, 10:58 PM
by pimlottc on 10/22/19, 1:17 PM
> But you probably want to know about the $5M thing.
No, I'd rather know about what Ghost is :P
by tjbiddle on 10/23/19, 3:31 AM
Slightly off-topic question: Is a handful of the Ghost team based in Bali? I know the team is 100% remote and I've noticed multiple laptops with Ghost stickers at my co-working center.
by antigirl on 10/23/19, 4:26 AM
by brianpgordon on 10/23/19, 3:57 AM
Doesn't Medium sort of do this? I get that you can't run your own instance or bill specifically for just your content, but otherwise it seems very similar.
by vivin on 10/22/19, 2:18 PM
by bbx on 10/23/19, 2:47 AM
But going through this blog post announcement, I saw that Ghost can be used as a headless CMS with frontend frameworks. And since I started using GatsbyJS extensively in the past year, it seems like something that would work _really_ well together.
(It turns out that the official website is actually built with GatsbyJS, so the integration is probably really robust.)
Gonna try it out! And congrats on remaining true to your initial philosophy.
by wlesieutre on 10/22/19, 1:16 PM
I've looked at Ghost on and off while considering setting up my personal site, and pricing is the reason I avoided it. I think they started at $5/month for "Ghost Pro" and are now up to $36 for Pro Basic or $99 for Pro Standard (a bit less purchased in bulk). At a minimum, it's now $348/year.
Having paid subscriptions built-in makes that easier to swallow. I don't want any 3rd party ad networks on my site, so subscriptions could help offset the high costs.
Wouldn't help me personally since my site isn't very active and wouldn't get subscribers, but I imagine this will work for some other folks.
by kstrauser on 10/23/19, 1:44 AM
by artpi on 10/23/19, 6:08 AM
The membership feature looks amazing and I honestly am very impressed by your landing page since I work on something a bit similar :).
The Stripe Billing integration sounds exciting, but I am curious about the 0% transaction fees. Stripe usually takes 2.9%+30c on charges and Stripe Billing costs 0.4$ (free for the first $1M so we can ignore that).
Did you negotiate some kind of a special deal with Stripe or the 0% means that YOU don't take additional fees, but Stripe fees are still there?
by tylermenezes on 10/23/19, 4:13 AM
by thesorrow on 10/22/19, 4:05 PM
by dpeck on 10/23/19, 12:48 AM
by 40four on 10/22/19, 5:02 PM
The built in editor and admin panel is great, but the real sweetness comes from the REST API. The ability to integrate into any custom website is fantastic!
by tvanantwerp on 10/22/19, 1:13 PM
by benfrain on 10/22/19, 4:37 PM
by quaffapint on 10/22/19, 2:15 PM