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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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 👍
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 :)
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.
Ah, right its stored as (rather basic) html instead of markdown.
Check out bludit.com (don‘t mind .com), stores posts in static files (front matter or md, not sure), has some plugins and themes. Worth a look.
On my „check later, no time at the moment list“ ist publii (https://getpublii.com/) - maybe also worth a look.
I had looked into GRAV which is not quite suited for blogging (i.e. date-based posts) but rather for wiki-like content or a simple page structure. Also, they’re also feeling more and more enterprisey, especially with their recent 2.x release.
Tried Serendipity but found it to be more or less on life-support.
And finally settled on a very basic WordPress with only a handful of plugins (all set to auto-update), most importantly SQLite and ActivityPub. Backups are a simple copy of all the files or just the SQLite db. The Gutenberg post format in the SQLite db is easy enough to convert it to anything else using a small custom Python script should need be. I don’t remember how I imported my existing posts, though. Might’ve been via RSS import.
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.
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.
