Using Ghost...
When I chose to give Ghost a try as a platform, I was curious to see how different it was to WordPress...
Obviously WordPress is the most popular CMS/Blogging package in the world, and Ghost, while popular, is nowhere near the size of it.
Then there's the fact that Ghost is more geared towards "Content Creators" and professional bloggers, newsletters, monetisation etc, whereas WP is more of a user tool for producing sites and blogs.
So why Ghost?
While Ghost does lack some WP features, such as posting to public feeds that aren't Twitter or Facebook (eurgh, could they pick two worse platforms?), and some of the editing capabilities of the WP editor (such as a <more> tag to excerpt text for posts on the front page (although it can use an alternative method as you can see), it does come with a few advantages.
One is a cleaner, less cluttered writing experience:
That's the entire writing front end as I look at it now. It's lovely. It does use a block-style editor, but one which is better than that used by WP IMO. No finicky placements or weird formatting. Just clean text.
Secondly is the typography. I'm a big Typography fan. Certainly not a nerd about it, but a lover of a good clean typeface. Apple for example, for all their iPhones, Macs, iTunes etc, the best thing they ever designed was the San Francisco font.
Seriously, it's outrageously beautiful, especially in Bold:
The typography of most Ghost themes by default uses a very similar font type, and it's beautiful. So that's a big win for me.
Thirdly, the native ability to use Unsplash imagery, built right-into the interface, for headers or in-post imagery is exceptionally versatile and means I no longer have to try and source a WoW screenshot to serve as a Featured Image header for most posts 😆
It's not all pros though...
The largest single con about Ghost, and using their official hosting solution, is the custom theming situation. Unless you're paying the $25 per month fee, users on the $9 per month tier (like me) cannot use "custom" themes. For a supposedly free and open source project where your fee is for hosting, this is a baffling, and infuriating stumble.
Paying over $100 per year should enable you to upload a handful of custom themes at a minimum. At the very least so that you can practice customising with the starter themes, and start to create your own customised homepages...
In the end...
I'm enjoying my time with Ghost. So much so that I've subscribed to the base plan for the year, bought a domain name, and published this site!
The custom theming limitation is a single blot on the otherwise fine picture that Ghost presents to users, and hopefully one they will rectify with the release of Ghost 6.0 later this year...
I'm continuing to build out content for the site, and I'm enjoying the act of writing again. After leaving the WP environment, and being disappointed in the methodology of using static html editors such as Publii and having no ability to create posts on mobile, getting back to the versatility an online CMS affords is really nice.
And nary a Matt Mullenweg in sight 😄