As its name suggests, Ghost is ‘light’, transparent and will take on an infinite amount of forms. The founders are claiming that it will change the world of online publishing.
The story behind Ghost
John O’Nolan decided it was time that blogging platforms were rid of all the weight, clutter and non-essentials that had gradually filled the space. After coming up with a concept and testing the water for interest, he enlisted Hannah Wolfe as the lead developer. Both were perfectly placed to tackle this, with a combined 15 years+ direct experience building websites and blogs and a specific dedication to WordPress. Having worked with WordPress sites since 2005 and as Deputy Head of the WordPress User Interface Group between 2009 – 2011, John had seen the ups and downs that brands and users have faced with their blogs. Similarly, Hannah worked with WordPress sites for over 7 years and is currently a senior developer at the rapidly growing Moo.com.
The beta version of Ghost launched in mid-September 2013 to its 6,000 Kickstarter backers (within 48 hours of launching on Kickstarter it had smashed its goal of £25,000 going on to raise almost £200,000), with the live version going on public release yesterday, October 14th.
What is Ghost?
Ghost is an open-source platform with a one-track mind for publishing. It focuses on ease, lightness and elegance, allowing users to focus on the matter in hand – blogging.
Ghost generates revenue by providing hosting for a fee. This amount is undisclosed as yet, but as with most other blogging platforms, users can purchase themes, so far starting from a minimum ‘donation’ of $9. Users also have the option to self-host their Ghost site.
Currently, the themes designed so far are simple and sleek:
Tophat Theme, price starting at $9
Linen Theme, free
What does it mean for brands?
The launch of Ghost will be like someone pressing the ‘reset’ button on blogging, where the only limitations are your creativity.
Benefits of Ghost:
It is flexible: And by flexible, we actually mean it is unlimited. With Ghost being an open-source program, anything can be produced. As well as customizing the layout, brands will be able to build their own plugins that directly suit their needs.
It can be used as an online newsroom or magazine: Perhaps one of Ghost’s most exciting upcoming features is its scalability for easy management of editors, authors and content. Has your business got plans to be the next Huffington Post, Mashable or Techcrunch?
It is easy to use: Ghost splits the screen in two during editing, with the markdown on the left and live preview on the right, so it changes as you edit, saving you time and lowering the number of clicks between views.
Analytics in one glance: Not only is the analytics dashboard beautiful, but it pulls everything you need into one page. This is also customizable with drag and drop functionality of your most important data. More importantly, for time-poor managers, a site’s success can be determined in a couple of seconds.
Content innovation: Ghost gives brands a great chance to be disruptive* and innovate with their content. With saturation existing within the overloaded pages of Facebook and Twitter, and the limitations of WordPress, brands need to find different ways of grabbing users’ attention.
It is not device dependent: Are you in charge of managing the site? Regardless of where you are or what you’re doing, you can edit your Ghost site from your laptop, mobile or tablet: a bonus for busy content managers.
Part of the Ghost dashboard
How is it different from WordPress?
Wordpress has long dominated as the preferred platform for websites, as well as blogs. So how can Ghost compete? Well, it seems in several ways:
- Ghost is going to be fast. It is specifically built for optimized performance and caching.
- The owners are invested in continual improvements. As a non-profit organization, Ghost is putting 100% of the money back into the development and making things better.
- Users own their own data. It’s all yours. Your face won’t be appearing in the latest Google ads…
- Ghost won’t sell – Yahoo and the like won’t be getting their hands on it anytime soon.
- Ghost’s editing platform operates with a side-by-side editor. So you can edit and see the changes.
- It brings blogging back to basics. It is, simply, a blog, as opposed to a website.
- Ghost have already partnered with the big boys to make its experience as great as possible; WooThemes and Envato, both big players in WordPress and Ghost partners, ensure there are already themes and an eco-system set up.
- If you’ve already got a WordPress site, Tumblr account or Blogger account, you can import it over at the click of a button.
So who’s going to be the first brand to take a leap into the Ghost world? We anticipate it will be one who’s unafraid of new technology and embraces untrodden paths. Perhaps they are already doing a great job in a space that’s less well-used than others. For example Snapchat or Tumblr.
What we can be sure about, is that the first brands that steps foot into this space will have thought carefully about the user-base, the platform and they will have a sturdy strategy.
Have you tried it out yet?
*In terms of disruptive content, Ghost is already considered disruptive technology – something that displaces an earlier technology (WordPress and other blogging platforms) and is released, bugs and all. It will naturally appeal to those on the fringes, the trendsetters and the first-adopters, and will eventually threaten the status quo. Brands with imagination have the chance to create high value, unique, idea-smashing content that will cut through the noise and make an impact.
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