from Hacker News

Ghost: Just a Blogging Platform

by skattyadz on 4/29/13, 12:04 PM with 44 comments

  • by johnonolan on 4/29/13, 1:20 PM

    I apologise for the confusion guys, this site wasn't really intended with you in mind as the target audience. I believe there was another direct link to the Kickstarter campaign which would have been more appropriate for HN. The marketing site is simply a "pretty thing" to attract some interest from consumers / casual users. Not intended as full demonstration or marketed at developers. I'll post myself when there's something you guys will actually be interested in (aka a GitHub link with a public repo in it).

    And yes "impatient in Manhatten" - that can be arranged, bro.

  • by jmduke on 4/29/13, 12:15 PM

    The domain 'tryghost' is something of a misnomer: this is a Kickstarter project.

    http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnonolan/ghost-just-a-...

  • by sergiotapia on 4/29/13, 12:49 PM

    This project doesn't exist. It's just a bait for the kickstarter page. Kind of bummed out, the features looked nice and I wanted to try it out.

    Perhaps a mod can change the title to 'Kickstarter: Ghost - Just a Blogging Platform'.

  • by filmgirlcw on 4/29/13, 1:21 PM

    I really, really like this. The decision to use Kickstarter might upset some, but I think it's a pragmatic way of ensuring that talent can focus on it to actually deliver a project to users.

    Still, I really hope to see a lot of activity pop-up on GitHub. Community is a bug reason WordPress won over everyone else and while I'm a big fan of opinionated software leadership, I also hope to see more people bring their ideas to the table.

    This is a niche for sure, but a niche I happily backed, in part because this looks like something I would really like to use.

    The decision to use Node is interesting. Another reason WordPress was so successful is because basically anyone with shared hosting could install it without having to use anything more than an FTP client (and now basically every host has a 1-click install). I'm curious as to the impact this might have on adoption beyond the hosted platform for its targeted user base.

    Regardless, I backed and I hope to see this sort of thing succeed, if only because we need more stuff like this in the wild.

  • by mwill on 4/29/13, 1:33 PM

    (I hope this doesn't sound like I'm being negative, I'm just thinking out loud)

    The video specifically mentions being targeted at users, not developers and taking a look at the kickstarter page, this feels less like an open source project and more like a startup that plans to open source it's core software.

    There's certainly a focus on selling it as a complete, ready to go package, tightly wrapped and best served with their hosting service, with the people living inside the ecosystem (Users, themers, etc) being the first class citizen here. It almost feels closer to Tumblr (minus social) than Wordpress.

    Even the "How does it work?" section seems to be written for someone who will build themes and plugins, specifically mentioning what the MIT licence means for theme developers.

    I'm really interested to see how this plays out, and if successful what the community will look like. It feels like a pretty unique setup. Or maybe I'm reading into it too much. : )

  • by EwanToo on 4/29/13, 12:23 PM

    I think it's rather sad when a project says they're open source, then says things like :

    "You'll need hosting for your blog no matter what, but our service will be the most powerful way of running Ghost - and the easiest to get started with. You'll have the full Ghost software with all bells, whistles, themes, plugins, and some extras that are only available with us (like automatic updates and backups)."

    So they won't be open sourcing it then if they're planning on not allowing people to add these features to the main code base?

  • by tommoor on 4/29/13, 12:50 PM

    I would be much more willing to pledge towards this if the current state of their code was available to see / install.

  • by joemaller1 on 4/29/13, 12:56 PM

    I'm looking for something like this, but there is no this here. "Try it" should go to Github, not Kickstarter.

  • by tryjottit on 4/29/13, 3:26 PM

    Hasn't Aaron Swartz's http://www.jottit.com solved this problem for years now?

    Go ahead - type in some markdown, then edit the page. You'll be presented with a two-pane view. Your markdown is rendered dynamically. When you're done, just choose the access level for the page (public/private) and you're good to go.

  • by russelluresti on 4/29/13, 2:57 PM

    I like the idea of an easy-to-use blogging platform, but I'm not completely sold on the use of markdown.

    I'd rather see another syntax language that allowed me a few more controls, like the ability to add classes to elements in case I wanted to switch up styles a bit (maybe I don't want all blockquotes to look the same, or all lists, etc).

  • by MWil on 4/29/13, 12:27 PM

    Call me when it's ready...

  • by zimbatm on 4/29/13, 1:28 PM

    It looks good and the execution seems to be well done. What I would really like to see a blogging platform that has a different take on article creation than textarea + publishing.

    Blog publishing is also about research, collecting the content and iterating on the article's content until one feels satisfied with the result.

  • by justastat on 4/29/13, 1:19 PM

    The UI seems to have taken a page from http://mouapp.com/

  • by byamit on 4/29/13, 2:22 PM

    If you're going to be a non-profit, wouldn't it be better to establish the non-profit and then do a fundraising drive? Assuming it's a tax-deductible non-profit, you have an additional benefit to the donation.

    Best of luck with the project!

  • by walt74 on 4/29/13, 12:33 PM

    Their own Blog has no RSS-Feed. I'm not convinced. Looks good, though.

  • by NelsonMinar on 4/29/13, 2:07 PM

    I hope http://blog.tryghost.org/ isn't intended as a demo. It's only a single article, no permalinks, no archives, no RSS/Atom feed.

  • by bricestacey on 4/29/13, 1:04 PM

    Button at bottom opens a modal that I can't scroll on an iPhone 5.

  • by epaga on 4/29/13, 1:40 PM

    The simplicity and markdown support reminds me a lot of http://throwww.com/ which is very impressive.

  • by cmwelsh on 4/29/13, 12:17 PM

    There's a broken link on the question mark above the CodeMirror widget. It should link to the Markdown website but it links to a 404.

  • by niix on 4/29/13, 12:42 PM

    Looks like Medium.

  • by maxaf on 4/29/13, 1:03 PM

    Would it be possible to see the rest of that chest tattoo? I'm dying to know.

    - impatient in Manhattan

  • by 33a on 4/29/13, 1:22 PM

    If they have latex support, I'd use it. Until then it's Wordpress for me.

  • by saejox on 4/29/13, 1:53 PM

    There is no code or sample site. Looks like a scam to me.

  • by TopazGuru on 4/29/13, 1:51 PM

    Try trilldy.com