Ghost: I don't see what the hype is about

Now, full disclosure before I begin. This blog is hosted on Ghost and I like it. It's simple and quick. Especially for the occasional blogger like me; who is hosting this on a Raspberry Pi 3 (update: I have now moved it to the cloud). While I found it as a perfect and easy solution for my needs; there's a lot of hype surrounding this platform - and this is my dig at it.

Ghost sells itself as a simpler, better Wordpress (and Medium) alternative for people who want to focus on writing. Initially funded through Kickstarter; it got some great press and is now backed by a handful of corporate sponsors. However, as I write this post; I must wonder if Ghost is worth anyone's time. Especially considering that wordpress isn't going anywhere.

Ease of use

Ghost delivers on the promise of a clean and writing-focused blog. It's an absolute pleasure to use and I see why I find myself drawn to it. However, setting up Ghost is not as straightforward as Wordpress (all configuration/setup is done via the ghost-cli) which can be a nightmare for some people when compared to Wordpress' legendary quick install; couple that with thousands of web hosts' wordpress hosting offerings; you don't have to touch a single line of code if you don't want to - ever.

The Technology

Ghost is a Node.js app written with the express framework. There's nothing special about ghost technically - Node is just a recent platform and has a lot of buzz going for it right now. However, node is fast. This is reflected throughout ghost. It's a very snappy and quick platform. It does leave me wondering however, how much of this speed comes from the actual framework vs. the lack of features. Yes, you heard that right - Ghost lacks much in the way of features beyond a theme changer and a markdown composer (as opposed to WYSIWIG/html in wordpress). Beyond that, it's just a database that holds posts and author information. That's it. There's no comments, no pages, just blog posts + metadata.

Now, this shouldn't be a strike against it; except for the fact that ghost has had corporate backing and more than enough money to fund it's development.

Ghost is just the new hipster younger brother of wordpress - old and boring, lame because it uses PHP. The reality is that any wordpress install with a decent caching plugin will be just as fast, useful and arguably even better than Ghost. If having a whole plethora of features (and an API) that you are never forced to use makes wordpress lame; then call me lame.

Why I still use Ghost

Now, after all the ranting - I'm sure you're screaming "Just shut up and use wordpress". Don't get me wrong. I like Ghost. I use it and will continue to. I would just like everyone to take a step into reality. It is nowhere near revolutionary. It's just a simplified version of wordpress without the extra useful features. Oh and we can't forget that it's written in Node.js which makes it automatically cool. In fact, shouldn't Node already have an internal module for that?

/**
 * This is how to make something automatically cool in Node.js
 */
var hipster = require('cool-factor');

hipster.use('ghost').then(function(anoint, result) {
  anoint(result).with('coolness'); // Automatically anoint anything Node touches with the cool-factor
});