Are you sick of tinkering with the complex frameworks on other blogging platforms? Then you are in the right place. The Ghost blogging platform is a great way to get your thoughts and ideas out there for the world to see. In fact, the primary objective of this platform is to free you from worrying about formatting and other challenges so that you can concentrate all your energies on writing. Blogging on Ghost would feel like a piece of cake to you.
Before you start using Ghost, there are a few things to keep in mind. In this guide, we’ll go over every piece of information you need to know to get started with this blogging platform. We’ll share all the important features of the Ghost that you need to make the most of your blogging experience. We’ll also address all of your concerns, such as how to create a blog post on Ghost and how Ghost differs from WordPress. By the end of this guide, you’ll be ready to start using Ghost to share your ideas with the world.
The Features of the Ghost Blogging Platform
Is Ghost Better Than WordPress?
How to Create Your First Blog Post on Ghost?
Ghost PRO Vs. Open-Source Ghost
What is Ghost CMS?
Ghost is a blogging platform that uses Markdown to generate posts. It’s free, open-source, easy to use, and perfect for beginner bloggers. Almost anyone can blog on Ghost to share their ideas and knowledge with the world. The platform offers contemporary tools for creating websites, publishing content, and sending newsletters to the audience.
The Ghost allows you to publish content in both Markdown and HTML formats. This means that you can create beautiful layouts and designs without having to worry about learning how to code. With this platform, you can write in your own voice without having to worry about the technical details of setting up a blog. Plus, Ghost is built on top of the Bootstrap framework, which makes it easy to customize and extend.
The Features of the Ghost Blogging Platform
- Open Source CMS: Ghost is an open-source CMS. It means the source code is open for review to anyone under the MIT license. Every user has a legal claim to use the software however they like. Moreover, any web developer can pick the code and continue developing it even if the company no longer exists.
- Easy Management of Blog: With Ghost, you are the manager of your own blog. The Ghost Admin settings and the user-friendly interface allow you to manage your blog’s language, global navigation menu, posts, pages, accent color, and even logos, icons, cover images, etc. You can hide your blog from the public, manage custom redirects, set your timezone according to that of the audience and connect your blog with your social media profiles, all by yourself.
- Built-in Beginner-Friendly Editors: With its all-purpose editors, Ghost gives you the best writing experience possible. The full-screen editor removes all interruptions, allowing you to write and edit content with complete calm and focus. Thanks to the Ghost Markdown editor, the writing platform also offers automatic text completion as you type. Furthermore, you can create links to your blog posts simply by selecting the text and then pasting in it the URL. As you upload images to your blog posts, the editor automatically resizes and compresses them.
- Organized Workflow:With Ghost, you can create short custom URLs for your pages and individual tags for your posts to organize the content and workflow. The platform then automatically generates sitemaps, paginated archives, and RSS feeds for all blog posts associated with each tag. If your blog features a variety of content types, you can also make reusable generic templates for certain blog posts. The platform’s user interface allows you to preview posts before you actually publish them for audience access. Moreover, your blog posts can also be featured and scheduled on Ghost.
- Built-in SEO: Ghost has built-in SEO that increases your blog’s visibility in search engines without the need for external plugins. By automatically building a sitemap that includes every page of the blog, it ensures that Google indexes every single URL of your blog. For every page, it also creates structured metadata, permalinks, and page titles. The essential component of SEO is speed which for Ghost websites is 20 times more than for WordPress websites.
- Multiple Importing and Exporting Tools: Ghost has multiple importing tools to import data from other platforms like WordPress, Tumblr, Medium, etc. Visitors can access the content right on your website following the import. There are also various exporting tools provided on the platform. Your content and images are available for download as JSON files and zip files, respectively. You always have quick and easy access to your blog’s data thanks to Ghost’s RESTful JSON API.
- Third-party Integrations: Ghost is integrated with more than 5000 third-party apps and services through Zapier. A few of these apps are pre-installed by default on the platform while others can be manually installed by the user. Thanks to Zapier, you can now send data and notifications to Slack and other commonly used apps. With Ghost’s FirstPromoter, you can design your own special affiliate program and pay others to promote the goods and services on your blog.
- Wide Range of Themes: You can choose from hundreds of wonderful themes and templates for your blog from the Ghost theme marketplace. If you want something more advanced than what’s available in the default Handlebars Themes, you can go for the custom ones. The custom editor allows you to create beautiful layouts from scratch with just a few clicks of your mouse! There’s also a magazine-style theme which they call Casper.
- Large Community and Excellent Support: Ghost provides the finest customer service around-the-clock. Simply email the team at [email protected] to get in touch. Coupled with the fact that it sends all subscribers priority emails, Ghost Pro is very responsive in this regard. There’s also a discussion board for beginner bloggers, where hundreds of thousands of queries are answered by knowledgeable members of the online community.
- High Security: By regularly testing the security of its hosted infrastructure and open-source software, Ghost ensures a high level of security. The Ghost CLI tool maintains all server directory permissions in accordance with OWASP Standards and automatically configures SSL certificates for all new Ghost installations. The security team continuously makes sure that any data placed into the database is protected by symlinks.
Is Ghost Better Than WordPress?
Although both WordPress and Ghost are well-known blogging platforms, they differ greatly from each other. Let’s explore the similarities and differences between the two so you can decide which is better.
Similarities
Both platforms have a lot of similarities that make them both great options for blogging.
- Both WordPress and Ghost are free and open source, so you can install them on your own server or even just share one with another blog or website.
- They both have a great user interface that makes it easy to manage multiple blog posts at once. You can even customize the look of each individual post with different colors and fonts.
- Both platforms also have a built-in commenting system so you can interact with your readers without having to go through another third-party service like Disqus or Facebook comments.
- Both Ghost and WordPress allow you to attach media-like images and videos directly from within the post itself, which saves time because you don’t have to upload them separately.
Differences
The following are the key differences between the two.
- Ghost has more features than WordPress when it comes to creating content layouts and themes. It is also more user-friendly than WordPress which has a slightly deeper learning curve.
- Ghost offers better SEO capabilities than WordPress and most other blogging platforms out there today. Speed is a crucial element of SEO, and Ghost websites have 20 times greater speed than WordPress websites.
- If you want to sell things on your blog, Ghost’s built-in e-commerce functionality can be of great help. WordPress, however, needs an eCommerce plugin (like WooCommerce) to get started.
- WordPress gives its users the ability to customize their blogs to their liking. Ghost doesn’t offer this level of customization, but it does have features that are similar to those of WordPress in terms of being able to customize the look and feel of your site.
- Ghost offers more than just a blog—it also provides a way for you to publish content directly on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter. WordPress doesn’t offer this feature as part of its core package, but there are plugins available that can help you do this.
To Sum Up
Both WordPress and Ghost have pros and cons of their own. Without a doubt, the most widely employed CMS is WordPress, which is used by many people to achieve a variety of objectives. However, Ghost is an excellent choice if you want to blog more quickly and effortlessly. If you’re a committed blogger ready to invest the time and effort, you can probably do better with the Ghost blogging platform.
How to Create Your First Blog Post on Ghost?
Creating your first blog post on Ghost requires you to have a Ghost account. The signup process is easy and only takes a few minutes. To get started, go to the Ghost website and click the “Sign Up” button. Enter your email address, choose a password, and click the “Create Account” button. Once your account is created, you’ll be taken to the Ghost Dashboard. This is where you’ll manage your blog, set up your blog’s pages, and customize your blog’s appearance by selecting a theme.
After you have a customized Ghost blog, it’s time to start writing your first blog post. To do this, click the “Posts” button from the side menu. This will open the Ghost Editor, where you can write your post. Once you’re done writing your post and uploading the appropriate media, you can click the “Preview” button to see how your post will appear on desktops, mobile devices, social media sites, and emails. Then click on the “Publish” button and choose if you want to make your post live now or later. Your post will now be live on your blog for the world to see.
Ghost PRO Vs. Open-Source Ghost
Final Thoughts
Ghost is a free and open source CMS that makes a great option for beginner bloggers. It offers all the savory features like user-friendly editors, self-management of blogs, multiple importing and exporting tools, built-in SEO, third-party integrations, a high level of security, built-in e-commerce functionality, a myriad of themes, a variety of customization options, and whatnot. If you want to use Ghost as your blogging platform, we hope this guide has helped you get started with it.
