Posted on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2014 by Will Hagle
Ghost is an open source publishing platform which is beautifully designed, easy to use, and free for everyone.
Ghost is a blogging platform dedicated to simplifying the publishing process so that writers can publish their own material in creative ways. The application is completely open source, so bloggers are free to use, modify, share and redistribute the platform as often as they’d like. The platform is available for download via the Ghost website, and after one download, it’s yours to use as you please. The application is essentially a content management system, similar to WordPress or Drupal. The major difference between Ghost and those other platforms, aside from it being open source, is that it makes everything so easy to do. Navigating between posts, clicking on content and editing things is incredibly simplistic. The platform has stripped away all the unnecessary features that bog down other content management systems to allow bloggers to focus on what truly matters.
One of the slower features on other systems is that it takes a while to load when attempting to preview a post. With Ghost, your posts are automatically previewed in the right-hand column as you write in the left. HTML is even automatically rendered in the right column as you type it in (there’s no need to click a separate “HTML” buttom). This allows freedom to tinker with formatting and other elements of your blog without worrying about hitting a “preview” button every time you make a change. In fact, there are barely any buttons at all on Ghost — and bloggers used to the old system won’t miss them. One of the coolest aspects of Ghost is the stats section, which is more user-friendly and visually-appealing than other platforms. Ghost automatically pulls stat updates from around the web and delivers them directly to your dashboard. The creators of Ghost obviously understand the many annoying problems that bloggers regularly face, and its platform does almost everything necessary to fix those issues.
