What we've learned from building Ghost after 5 years and $3M • Hacker News Board

Re: What we've learned from building Ghost after 5 years and $3M

#131

Post by EGreg » Thu, May 17, 2018, 1:48 AM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #27

johnonolan wrote: post #24

Good morning HN! John from Ghost here - Thanks for all your support over the last 5 years. We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for that very first blog post hitting the #1 spot of HN and getting so much attention back in 2012. That was the very first time anyone ever heard about Ghost, and everything we've built since then has been thanks to that.

Hey, thanks for Ghost, seriously. I was looking to port over our homegrown django blog app into a proper blogging engine and I immediately though of Medium because of HN conditioning, and had so many problems with it, all of them boiling down to lack of control: No way to embed stuff we wanted (we wanted to embed interactive graphs and tooltips), no way to disable some bullshit features (highlight popups), no way to…

What is self hostable?

Re: What we've learned from building Ghost after 5 years and $3M

#132

Post by slig » Thu, May 17, 2018, 2:30 AM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #131

scrollaway wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, thanks for Ghost, seriously. I was looking to port over our homegrown django blog app into a proper blogging engine and I immediately though of Medium because of HN conditioning, and had so many problems with it, all of them boiling down to lack of control: No way to embed stuff we wanted (we wanted to embed interactive graphs and tooltips), no way to disable some bullshit features (highlight popups), no way to…

What is self hostable?

Grab the code and host yourself on your own servers.

Re: What we've learned from building Ghost after 5 years and $3M

#133

Post by ulisesrmzroche » Thu, May 17, 2018, 2:32 AM UTC

augbog wrote: post #90

ulisesrmzroche wrote: post #75

Ghost is looking dated today with those templates and their script tags. Technically speaking, today, I'd rather use Gatsby as a Wordpress front-end.

I feel Ghost is trying to be the ideal replacement for WordPress i.e. you have a lot of engineers who love JavaScript and node but also having a marketing team that wants a blogging platform. I also agree it feels like static site generators are starting to take over (personally think its an awesome direction the web is headed towards for some sites) but not everyone is familiar how to use them so Ghost is another ni…

I remember it used to sell itself as the most modern platform though, but that was back in 2013 or so, perhaps that's why it bugs me.

Re: What we've learned from building Ghost after 5 years and $3M

#134

Post by cyberferret » Thu, May 17, 2018, 3:04 AM UTC

johnonolan wrote: post #24

Good morning HN! John from Ghost here - Thanks for all your support over the last 5 years. We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for that very first blog post hitting the #1 spot of HN and getting so much attention back in 2012. That was the very first time anyone ever heard about Ghost, and everything we've built since then has been thanks to that.

Just wanted to add my thanks here too. Started using Ghost (self hosted) for the developer blog for our SaaS about 3 years ago, and never looked back. Extremely easy to maintain and manage, and uses minimal server resources. Thanks for bringing Ghost into the world!

Re: What we've learned from building Ghost after 5 years and $3M

#135

Post by profalseidol » Thu, May 17, 2018, 3:13 AM UTC

johnonolan wrote: post #24

Good morning HN! John from Ghost here - Thanks for all your support over the last 5 years. We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for that very first blog post hitting the #1 spot of HN and getting so much attention back in 2012. That was the very first time anyone ever heard about Ghost, and everything we've built since then has been thanks to that.

Why not Free Software license?

Re: What we've learned from building Ghost after 5 years and $3M

#136

Post by pmart123 » Thu, May 17, 2018, 3:16 AM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #27

johnonolan wrote: post #24

Good morning HN! John from Ghost here - Thanks for all your support over the last 5 years. We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for that very first blog post hitting the #1 spot of HN and getting so much attention back in 2012. That was the very first time anyone ever heard about Ghost, and everything we've built since then has been thanks to that.

Hey, thanks for Ghost, seriously. I was looking to port over our homegrown django blog app into a proper blogging engine and I immediately though of Medium because of HN conditioning, and had so many problems with it, all of them boiling down to lack of control: No way to embed stuff we wanted (we wanted to embed interactive graphs and tooltips), no way to disable some bullshit features (highlight popups), no way to…

I eco #1 on your wish list. For the record, my company pays for the hosted version of Ghost.

Re: What we've learned from building Ghost after 5 years and $3M

#137

Post by reilly3000 » Thu, May 17, 2018, 3:20 AM UTC

cygned wrote: post #106

I was on board from the beginning! What a great product. Too bad they dropped support for Postgres at some point, otherwise it would still be my platform of choice!

I’ve seen a couple comments about this issue, as well as it’s mention in the article. What about Postgres is appealing to the point that it is a deal breaker not to have? Is it familiarity or a specific aspect like scaling or ecosystem?

Re: What we've learned from building Ghost after 5 years and $3M

#138

Post by stephen_g » Thu, May 17, 2018, 3:23 AM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #27

johnonolan wrote: post #24

Good morning HN! John from Ghost here - Thanks for all your support over the last 5 years. We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for that very first blog post hitting the #1 spot of HN and getting so much attention back in 2012. That was the very first time anyone ever heard about Ghost, and everything we've built since then has been thanks to that.

Hey, thanks for Ghost, seriously. I was looking to port over our homegrown django blog app into a proper blogging engine and I immediately though of Medium because of HN conditioning, and had so many problems with it, all of them boiling down to lack of control: No way to embed stuff we wanted (we wanted to embed interactive graphs and tooltips), no way to disable some bullshit features (highlight popups), no way to…

Yeah, I was really surprised by the Postgres being dropped. I was using it and suddenly it was deprecated and removed...

I use Postgres for other things, really don't like having to have a separate MySQL setup just for ghost...

Re: What we've learned from building Ghost after 5 years and $3M

#139

Post by Whitestrake » Thu, May 17, 2018, 3:26 AM UTC

Rotareti wrote: post #125

qrv3w wrote: post #39

Thanks for the post, its great to hear that Ghost is doing well - I love using it. > [Github] has become too transactional - more support tool than collaboration I strongly agree with this. I wish Github "Issues" were relabeled "Comments" and need not be "Open" or "Closed". Issues need action, comments do not. I've been burned many times now by solving someone's issue and then finding out they use my code for their b…

Why not just close the issue and direct the person to stackoverflow, superuser, etc. if you think it falls into that category?

Then you get a reputation as a rude developer, whether or not that's fair or warranted.

Re: What we've learned from building Ghost after 5 years and $3M

#140

Post by hawkice » Thu, May 17, 2018, 3:28 AM UTC

johnonolan wrote: post #126

vanilla-almond wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congratulations on the 5th anniversary! A question: Do you think your choice of technology stack (JavaScript, node.js) played a part in your success? I've read many times from product creators that developers wildly overestimate the importance of choosing a language or technology stack when in fact it has little bearing on whether a product will succeed. Do you have any thoughts on this topic?

I do! It's nuanced, and every language decision has benefits and drawbacks. Making a bet on JavaScript/Node.js 5+ years ago was a big risk - a lot of people laughed at us or chastised the decision. A lot of those people are now also rewriting their apps in JavaScript. When it came to selecting Node, the biggest benefit was that it was notable. If we had said "HEY we're making another blogging platform in, wait for it…

Woah! That information about Docker is bananas. I've worked on projects with more than 200 VMs. Talk about things that don't show up on HN: scaling issues with popular technology where you never find a solution.