My blog is currently running on Ghost 1.0 I’m blogging for almost 20 years, started with blogger.com I think, eventually migrated to self-hosted Ghost when it was pretty new and lightweight. I can host anything that runs on Linux, I can even use Docker.
I don’t want to migrate to the latest Ghost version because it feels very enterprisey now, needs a lot of resources on the server and uses a complex data format instead of Markdown. I don’t need monetization either.
My requirements are:
- possible to migrate ~30-40 Markdown posts + embedded images from Ghost 1.0
- future proof, i.e. simple data format so I don’t get locked in
- low RAM/CPU usage
- easy maintenance, creating posts, backups, etc
- RSS support
I’ll be very grateful for any suggestions.
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Being that you are 20 years in the blog space, you may not like my answer.
I had a similar experience as you. I was using ghost blog. I thought it was going to make having a blog so much easier. It didn’t.
Anyways, I looked and looked and tried a few and nothing felt right.
I settled on learning HTML and CSS using docker ngnx server to dish out my index page.
Making everything the way you want it is so much more pleasing than the cookie cuter blog platforms. Learning everything took a few days of studying and watching YouTube videos. But eventually you pick up enough to online search your way out of something you may not have learned or forgot.
This makes having a blog so basic and and small of a program and storage space. Super lightweight.
That’s a very refreshing take and it reminds me of a simpler time, before “Web 2.0”. I can do HTML/CSS no problem, I actually teach a web development course in high school. For my own blog it might be too much of a distraction though, I really want to focus on the content.
But I agree, building a website from scratch can be very rewarding :)
Depending on exactly what features you actually need in term of things like commenting, you might want to look into a static site generator. Something like hugo woud probably do what you need in terms of translating the markdown into a blog. It has the advantage that you can them host the pages on a normal web server, rather than running a blogging platform, giving you a much lighter weight server footprint, and a much smaller attack surface too.
I don’t really need comments, only RSS. Hugo is a great piece of software, I actually use it for my personal webpage. It would be an option for the blog too, my only gripe is that it adds some friction. For example if I want to embed images, I have to upload them somewhere, and manually insert the filename. I also need regenerate the site if I add new posts. I know this can be automated using scripts.
With Ghost it’s very simple, I can just write a post, upload the images, hit “Publish” and done. There was even a mobile app for writing new posts, but it doesn’t work anymore.
Hugo can handle images through its asset pipelines, so you should be able to just store them with your markdown. I agree it’s a little more friction than a blogging pkatform, but it does mean that you can just write your posts in your editor of choice and publish them with just a command, or if you’re feeling fancy, set up git to trigger publishing when you push.
This is a good point actually. As others have mentioned, editors like VS Code make working with images in markdown easier. I’m also looking into Obsidian, which I already use on my phone, but it might be too much effort to setup for this purpose.
So I’m warming up to the idea of using a static site generator, just need to figure out a workflow. There is also Zola which is kind of like Hugo but smaller and written in Rust.
Maybe write freely would be an option? There is also a hosted version of it on write.as. It also speaks Activity Pub so it would be published on the fediverse too. I’ve not looked super deeply into the technology, but considered using it for my (future) blog.
For my purposes, this definitely looks like an upgrade, thank you for the suggestion!
I like how it’s similar to Ghost, but a lot smaller and easier to maintain. There is also an iOS app for editing posts on the go.
I think it will be either this, or one of the static site generators.
You mentioned self hosting but if you want something without any lock in, there’s https://prose.sh/ — it open source, supports images, markdown, and you bring your own editor.
GoToSocial supports RSS and is extremely lightweight. Posts and account also federate, and you can use Mastodon client apps on desktop and mobile to write posts (no web UI). Might be worth a look 👍
Have you taken a look at bear blog, it uses markdown or html and aimed to be small and maintainable well into the figure
I use 11ty to host my static site. I’ve used it for years. It’s well documented and learning resources.
I didn’t know about 11ty, thanks for the suggestion! I’ve been using Hugo before, but not for blogging. Maybe a static site generator is the way to go after all.
Check out Zola too.
I dont remember why now, but it was at the top of my list when researching ssgs a while back for rewriting my site.
Thanks! I’ve already checked it out, and it looks promising. From what I’ve seen so far it’s similar to Hugo but written in Rust instead of Go.
I love ghost’s UI and feature set.
What complex data format are you taking about? Last time I checked, it was plain markdown in a database (even supporting sqlite).
What I’d recommend though, is coupling it with a static site generator and only using the ghost server for the administration / authoring (guides). That way, serving the blog to visitors is basically free in terms of resources (at last as low as it gets). You could even push these static builds to a CDN (yes yes, selfhost community, I’m just saying it for completeness)
It might be some hassle to set this up somehow, but you could even have the container stopped unless you actively need it. You could even run the server application on your computer instead of the server, unless you want to access is from a smartphone/tablet.
If you really want an alternative to Ghost and don’t need user management and an online WYSIWYG editor, you could go straight to an SSG and feed itraw it markdown files.
From what I’ve read, the new editor does not use Markdown by default anymore. It’s possible to create a Markdown “card” but that’s still embedded in the new format. So it’s very easy to accidentally create posts that cannot be exported as plain .md anymore.
From the link above:
Koenig has now been rebuilt on a new stack: React.js and Lexical — both of which are open source frameworks developed by Meta. So, Ghost is now using the same underlying technology that powers every single editor, comment box, or user input for billions of users across Facebook and Instagram.
The static site generator is a very cool idea, I didn’t know Ghost could do that.
Ah, right its stored as (rather basic) html instead of markdown.
