I just read a blog post from Nic Wise over here about a new blogging platform, Ghost. I was using Octopress and hosting with Github Pages. This was working out ok, but I was not posting very often because the process of making a post with Octopress was a little painful. I was really looking for something simpler and also that I could edit/post from anywhere with any device. Once I read Nic's post, I thought Ghost sounded pretty awesome.
I checked it out, signed up and installed it using Bitnami so I could test it out locally before I made any big decisions. Using the Bitnami installer made it easy to test out Ghost, and I was able to test out exporting my Octopress posts using a python script someone posted on the Ghost forums. That test didn't go so well, so I decided to just manually move my posts. I only had four posts from my Octopress blog so this was no big deal. I played around with Ghost locally for a bit and I fell in love with it!
Now that I wanted to use Ghost, I needed a new way to host this blog because Github pages wouldn't do. Ghost actually just started offering a hosted solution starting at $5/mo - not bad. However, I had been seeing promoted tweets by Digital Ocean and I was interested in trying them out. They offer a VPS starting at $5/mo with 512MB RAM, 20GB SSD and 1TB data traffic. I figured this was a better value. I also found that they recently had a "one-click" install for Ghost which made it even easier to set up. Even better then that, I had a $10 promo for being a new customer!
Everything is setup now using Ghost and hosting by Digital Ocean, and it was pretty painless to set up. I read a few tutorials to get used to the console access and SFTP that Digital Ocean offers to manage your VPS, but other then that it was pretty easy to pick up everything else. I will continue to use Ghost while it is being developed and be able to evaluate it better further along its life-cycle. So far, I am really liking it for these reasons:
- Modern, slick UI and UX
- Markdown editor
- Responsive design, so I can use the full editor on any device
- Theme marketplace makes it easy to customize the look
Can't wait to see what else Ghost will deliver on, including that sexy dashboard they have been flashing around.
If you want to try out Digital Ocean, here is a referral link that will help me keep this blog alive.
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