I thought I'd mention that this is the release for Kickstarter backers only right now. Unfortunately, I didn't find out about this project until after the KS so I am out of luck for a few weeks.
If you don't know what Ghost is, I suggest you take a look at John O'Nolan's post from a while back that precipitated Ghost: http://john.onolan.org/ghost
I'm not sure exactly. I just follow John on Twitter and get updates via that. There are lots of unanswered questions that I think we'll be getting answers to over the next few weeks.
Awesome news. I'm assuming Ghost saves to a database. Hopefully it is written in such a way that it will be easy to plugin a static-generation module. Since this is Node.js I'm guessing you are using Express, and it would be great if backends could be implemented as middleware. Really looking forward to taking a look at the source!
This announcement suffers from the common problem of assuming readers already know what Ghost is. A few paragraphs down you mention Markdown and Jack Kerouac so I assume Ghost is related to text editing, but a sentence or two at the very top that explains Ghost would make this much better.
Does a website have to summarize the purpose of the website in every article it contains? Could you have just looks at the address bar, typed in ghost.org and found out easily?
I was confused by this as well. I don't think every page needs to have the product description and mission statement at the top, but I should at least be able to click on a logo to find out more.
As is, I actually had to type in "ghost.org" manually into the URL bar because they don't have a link from their blog to their website.
Its a modern open source blogging platform using current popular technologies. Add in the simplicity of markdown based editing, what promises to be a good theme and plugin development experience, and I can see the attraction over stuff like wordpress and drupal. I could easily start a rant about PHP, so suffice it to say that the chance of a good new blog platform NOT WRITTEN PHP is a pretty huge deal.
If I had to reply to my own question I would answer that perhaps this happened simply because of the huge number of bloggers around which for a big part are not that much tech savvy, making them more exposed to the appeal of a "better, easier than wordpress" blogging platform.
I think that such big revenue came exactly from the stress devs put on the "simplicity feature".
But I have this kind of feeling that I would like to be shown the part of the picture I am ignoring so to be proven wrong (which hasn't happened so far...).
the project was spearheaded by a guy who is well-known,
having worked a long time in the wordpress community.
plus it tapped into simmering uneasiness that wordpress
has now overgrown itself into a convoluted bloated mess.
i also happen to believe that the 2-pane display, with
light-markup input on one side and output on the other,
is the _best_ user-interface for light-markup, but that
likely occurs subconsciously (if at all) for most people.
finally, of course, once a kickstarter project goes viral,
it gets even more attention because people talk about that.
Congrats, this is one kickstarter that delivered, not to be taken for granted.
Unfortunately I was late for the campaign, but once it hits the public, I'll give it a try.
For those who don't know, it's a new blogging platform based on Node.js that tries to break away from the wordpress bloat and get blogging back to basics. And with great looks :)
Why not let people buy it? Says the public release is in "a few weeks" - I'll probably have forgotten it exists by then, but now I would probably impulse pay $20 for early access.
From the link: "In a couple of weeks, once we've ironed some bugs, smoothed some edges, and given those people a chance to try Ghost out... we'll be opening up Ghost to the public. The Github repository will go public, and everyone will be able to sign up for an account on Ghost.org."
"In a couple of weeks, once we've ironed some bugs, smoothed some edges, and given those people a chance to try Ghost out... we'll be opening up Ghost to the public. The Github repository will go public, and everyone will be able to sign up for an account on Ghost.org."
I'd love to try this, I'm just in the process of creating my blog with jekyll but this seems like a good alternative. Any chance I can contribute now and get on the list?
Wordpress is plug and play on almost any webhost out there (some even have installers for it). Ghost is node.js which is barely supported by webhosting companies (you will most likely need a VPS or some specific node.js HaaS, at least).
How will this not be a huge barrier to achieve the same traction Wordpress has?
It WILL be a huge barrier. It think Ruby was one (of many) reason(s) Diaspora* never took off. RoR is mainstream compared to Node.js. In my opinion Node is a wacko choice for a non-profit company looking to create a broad appeal blogging software which will be a real alternative to WordPress.
No, the lack of interest from hosting providers wasn't why ruby failed. It's due mostly to performance issues, some of which are due to its design and some of which are due to its implementation.
However with Ruby 1.9 - 2.0 (2.1 will support generational gc, finally) the performance of Ruby (with ORM and non-c frameworks, like phalcon and Yaf) is drawing close to parity with PHP.[1] I think that what drove diaspora's failure is the lack of people who truly care to run their own nodes. There's a pretty steep "cost of acquisition" to get a single diaspora user.
Wait, Ruby is actually slower than PHP? So whenever some webdev laughs at me for using PHP and points me to that "A fractal of bad design" article, I can just laugh back and say "Well, at least my language is faster!"? Amazing.
Ruby, as generally served with Rails, has historically been much slower than SQL-in-the-page PHP with APC/etc.
One example[1], from 37 Signals back in 2009, showed a 320ms response time (gack!) with 9,000 requests per minute on 10 4vcpu/4gb VMs in a private cluster.
Assuming they had a reasonably tuned storage subsystem, this is pretty terrible performance. That's about 150 requests per second for 10 VMs with 40 vcpus and 40gb RAM. However, that doesn't quite match up with the 320ms claim, which would have them pushing a little lower. I'll assume a rounding error.
Things have gotten better in many cases, but hardware and scaling up and out is still the best way to improve rails performance.
I don't think I could find a better summary for why rails was bad for a CMS than that post. You could do much better with ruby but until some more killer non-rails ruby web apps are written, ruby's reputation will be inseparable from that of rails.
One of the last complaints anyone has had about PHP is that it's slow. PHP's main competitors have only recently begun to catch up in terms of speed, and the future of PHP is looking like it's going to remain competitive and near/in the lead.
It shouldn't aim to be Wordpress, because it won't be easily deployable on shared hosting. If you look at how Tumblr is commonly used to power blogs, I think this could be similar, but obviously more fragmented unless there's one big host that becomes the de facto standard.
54 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 103 ms ] threadIf you don't know what Ghost is, I suggest you take a look at John O'Nolan's post from a while back that precipitated Ghost: http://john.onolan.org/ghost
http://blog.tryghost.org/
This announcement suffers from the common problem of assuming readers already know what Ghost is. A few paragraphs down you mention Markdown and Jack Kerouac so I assume Ghost is related to text editing, but a sentence or two at the very top that explains Ghost would make this much better.
Again, congrats on the launch.
As is, I actually had to type in "ghost.org" manually into the URL bar because they don't have a link from their blog to their website.
I think that such big revenue came exactly from the stress devs put on the "simplicity feature".
But I have this kind of feeling that I would like to be shown the part of the picture I am ignoring so to be proven wrong (which hasn't happened so far...).
plus it tapped into simmering uneasiness that wordpress has now overgrown itself into a convoluted bloated mess.
i also happen to believe that the 2-pane display, with light-markup input on one side and output on the other, is the _best_ user-interface for light-markup, but that likely occurs subconsciously (if at all) for most people.
finally, of course, once a kickstarter project goes viral, it gets even more attention because people talk about that.
-bowerbird
i would be surprised if they didn't try to build a hosted version, wordpress style.
So, domain aside, that is supposed to eventually happen.
Unfortunately I was late for the campaign, but once it hits the public, I'll give it a try.
For those who don't know, it's a new blogging platform based on Node.js that tries to break away from the wordpress bloat and get blogging back to basics. And with great looks :)
https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Node-Hosting
I've used it with a Hubot instance for our Hipchat room at the office and it works great.
Also, is the code going to be in github?
http://ghost.onolan.org/what-it-means-to-be-non-profit
and the post does a good job explaining what that means and why it was chosen. I definitely want to see more mini-Mozillas :)
How will this not be a huge barrier to achieve the same traction Wordpress has?
[1]: http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r6&hw=i7...
One example[1], from 37 Signals back in 2009, showed a 320ms response time (gack!) with 9,000 requests per minute on 10 4vcpu/4gb VMs in a private cluster.
Assuming they had a reasonably tuned storage subsystem, this is pretty terrible performance. That's about 150 requests per second for 10 VMs with 40 vcpus and 40gb RAM. However, that doesn't quite match up with the 320ms claim, which would have them pushing a little lower. I'll assume a rounding error.
Things have gotten better in many cases, but hardware and scaling up and out is still the best way to improve rails performance.
[1] https://37signals.com/svn/posts/1819-basecamp-now-with-more-...