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Democratising publishing

john.onolan.org

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Re: Democratising publishing

#41

Post by shortformblog »

0xEF wrote: post #29
saaaaaam wrote: post #14

I shifted a large 20+ year news publication from Wordpress to ghost about 18 months ago - and opted to use Ghost(Pro) It’s been a dream. The core product for that site is a daily newsletter. On ghost it gets higher opens rates and more engagement than via the previous email backend. Build is far simpler too. The clincher for me for Ghost(Pro) is that if you use your own hosted version of Ghost you need to plug into s…

On the off chance that someone here has recommendations, I'll reply and say my experience with Ghost Pro was different. I am trying to start a small blog that will have a handful of writers, so the idea of using some kind of lightweight CMS with edit/post capability is appealing, but we don't like the clunky feeling of beefy CMSs, especially when it seems to be built entirely around the analytics, which we do not car…

Thanks to Kye for pointing this out to me.

Honestly, you’re actually not going to find much better for a simple multi-user setup than Ghost. It may have a lot of features built around newsletters and analytics that you’re not using, but the thing is, they’re there because it’s essentially throwing you the package it thinks will benefit most users, rather than forcing you to choose a bunch of plugins. If it feels overkill, that’s only because they wanted to cover the broadest use cases, rather than forcing users to decide on a package of 30 plugins, by a myriad number of developers.

I have used a lot of CMS platforms and I think you will find the complexity actually goes up from Ghost in most cases. (And if simplicity is your goal … you’re not going to find that with Drupal, which is extremely enterprise-oriented these days.)

If you think you’re getting overcharged for it, I’d recommend looking into self-hosting. Ghost is an extremely easy piece of software to run in a Docker instance on a shoebox somewhere. I do it myself for a couple of small sites. It’s really not that bad.

Re: Democratising publishing

#42

Post by tchock23 »

djoldman wrote: post #31

For the tax or corp. lawyers: Is it possible for some clever business person to start a non-profit, amass a bundle of money, convert to for-profit, and then own the bundle of money to do with as they see fit? If yes, I'd assume there would be tax implications in that the bundle of money would be some ~70% after paying the gov.

Not a lawyer, but my local university (a registered non-profit) had an AI department that took in a ton of grant money before they rolled it out into a for-profit.

The "founders" got fat salaries and bonuses after the conversion. They then started going around town hyping their success and whitewashing the history of the "startup" as if it was bootstrapped.

I have no idea how they managed to legally pull that off...

Re: Democratising publishing

#43

Post by noirscape »

ValentineC wrote: post #35
jdtig wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, WordPress made it 20+ years without a huge fuss over the fact that everything was controlled by Matt. And it only happened now because Matt himself blew things up! Ghost has been lucky that their own conflict of interest hasn't been an issue: The cofounders don't own anything, but they still have complete control on the nonprofit. It sounds like John O'Nolan is trying to take pre-emptive steps to prevent WordPr…

> Well, WordPress made it 20+ years without a huge fuss over the fact that everything was controlled by Matt. And it only happened now because Matt himself blew things up! I think most people in the community were willing to overlook Matt's previous petty, vindictive behaviour (e.g. Thesis, Wix, Pantheon, GoDaddy, Tumblr) since he's fairly charismatic in his writing, and was otherwise mostly benevolent.

It also helps that at least one of those (GoDaddy) has one of the worst reputations for a tech company out there.

I don't know if they still do it, but GoDaddy was notorious for just "early buying" domain names if you use their domain search engine (or any affiliated ones; it's why you really shouldn't search for domain names on random sites, GoDaddy controls a lot of domain search engines) to ensure you can't see if they're the cheapest option. Matt being upset with GoDaddy is easy to overlook because they're just plain awful already and it's a sort of "we don't agree with that in specific, but GoDaddy is a genuine problem so like, it's easy to overlook".

By contrast, WP Engine is just another general purpose hosting provider. I haven't found much evidence of them being particularly worse to their customers outside of their funding being a bad long-term choice. A lot of Matt's problems with WPE are well... Matt's problem and he can't seem to grasp that to everyone else, his smearing just makes him look like a petty dick.

Re: Democratising publishing

#44

Post by joshmanders »

echoangle wrote: post #39
bastloing wrote: post #38

I just post on X. Get paid for it too!

How much do you get out per month?

Depends on how much energy you put into it...

But for my own experience of someone who isn't trying to be a content creator, I just have monetization turned on because I may as well get paid for the time I'm gonna be on there, which I would do regardless... I'm taking home about $50/mo for my $8/mo investment.

If i have anything that goes off, obviously more. I got approved for monetization in March of this year, and so far with a few viral posts and regular usage, I've made about $1200 this year on the platform.

Re: Democratising publishing

#45

Post by 23B1 »

jdtig wrote: post #30
23B1 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ghost has been lucky that their own conflict of interest hasn't been an issue But the whole point of this article is that it wasn't luck, it was intentional from the beginning...

I don't think the point of the article is that everything was intentional. He leads with the differentiators from WordPress because WordPress alternatives are a big conversation at the moment. This is a chance to inform people about how Ghost chose to be different: Non-profit, no plugins, etc. But the final section ("Governance & the road ahead") seems like a subtle admission that the current Ghost structure wouldn't…

The main point of this article is to explain Ghost's unique approach to open-source publishing software through its non-profit foundation model and its vision for democratic governance.

The author (Ghost's original co-founder) outlines how Ghost differentiates itself by:

- Operating as a profitable non-profit foundation with no owners, where all profits are reinvested into the project

- Maintaining independence from investors and commercial interests to better serve its community's needs

- Focusing exclusively on publishing workflows rather than trying to be an all-purpose platform

- Planning for sustainable long-term governance, by

- Intentionally limiting the organization to ~50 people

- Planning to expand its board of trustees beyond the founders

- Growing an ecosystem rather than a single large company

I emphasized the active, concrete verbs (actually gerunds fwiw) so that you may see how they are different than the passive verbs associated with 'luck' like hoping, wishing, praying, etc.

Re: Democratising publishing

#46

Post by hobs »

0xEF wrote: post #29
saaaaaam wrote: post #14

I shifted a large 20+ year news publication from Wordpress to ghost about 18 months ago - and opted to use Ghost(Pro) It’s been a dream. The core product for that site is a daily newsletter. On ghost it gets higher opens rates and more engagement than via the previous email backend. Build is far simpler too. The clincher for me for Ghost(Pro) is that if you use your own hosted version of Ghost you need to plug into s…

On the off chance that someone here has recommendations, I'll reply and say my experience with Ghost Pro was different. I am trying to start a small blog that will have a handful of writers, so the idea of using some kind of lightweight CMS with edit/post capability is appealing, but we don't like the clunky feeling of beefy CMSs, especially when it seems to be built entirely around the analytics, which we do not car…

Just mentioning that Drupal is way more complicated than any of the other offerings as well.

Re: Democratising publishing

#47

Post by 0xEF »

shortformblog wrote: post #41
0xEF wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the off chance that someone here has recommendations, I'll reply and say my experience with Ghost Pro was different. I am trying to start a small blog that will have a handful of writers, so the idea of using some kind of lightweight CMS with edit/post capability is appealing, but we don't like the clunky feeling of beefy CMSs, especially when it seems to be built entirely around the analytics, which we do not car…

Thanks to Kye for pointing this out to me. Honestly, you’re actually not going to find much better for a simple multi-user setup than Ghost. It may have a lot of features built around newsletters and analytics that you’re not using, but the thing is, they’re there because it’s essentially throwing you the package it thinks will benefit most users, rather than forcing you to choose a bunch of plugins. If it feels over…

You've convinced me to give it another shot. Another commenter also pointed out Drupal's complexities, which I should have realized, in retrospect.

I am also looking at October, which sounds like it checks some of my boxes, but we'll see. Thankfully, there is no time-table for this project, so I can try a few things out before we settle.

https://github.com/octobercms/october

Re: Democratising publishing

#48

Post by adolph »

ValentineC wrote: post #33
djoldman wrote: post #31

For the tax or corp. lawyers: Is it possible for some clever business person to start a non-profit, amass a bundle of money, convert to for-profit, and then own the bundle of money to do with as they see fit? If yes, I'd assume there would be tax implications in that the bundle of money would be some ~70% after paying the gov.

> Is it possible for some clever business person to start a non-profit, amass a bundle of money, convert to for-profit, and then own the bundle of money to do with as they see fit? Not a lawyer, but as the Ghost Foundation is not a charity, the trustees can currently do whatever they want with the money.

Their about page claims non profit, Wikipedia and others say registered in Singapore but I don’t see anything under “ghost” as a society [0] or as a charity [1]. For something that has “believe in being transparent” in the about page, the lack of any registration number or a link to the touted constitution is odd.

DNS registrant is from West Yorkshire, GB [2].

0. https://eservices2.mha.gov.sg/ros/search-society

1. https://authoring.charities.gov.sg/

2. https://www.whois.com/whois/ghost.org

Re: Democratising publishing

#49

Post by insane_dreamer »

This is the model that most tech companies who say they are founded on the basis of "helping the world to do X" should adopt. Major Kudos to the Ghost founders for actually following through on their ideals rather than playing lip service to them until the big money flows in, like so many others. And you know, this model is not for everyone and that's fine, but if you're not planning on following through then drop the bullshit idealism from the start and just plainly come out with "we're here to make as much money as possible". (Looking at you, Altman, and many others.)

Re: Democratising publishing

#50

Post by ValentineC »

adolph wrote: post #48
ValentineC wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it possible for some clever business person to start a non-profit, amass a bundle of money, convert to for-profit, and then own the bundle of money to do with as they see fit? Not a lawyer, but as the Ghost Foundation is not a charity, the trustees can currently do whatever they want with the money.

Their about page claims non profit, Wikipedia and others say registered in Singapore but I don’t see anything under “ghost” as a society [0] or as a charity [1]. For something that has “believe in being transparent” in the about page, the lack of any registration number or a link to the touted constitution is odd. DNS registrant is from West Yorkshire, GB [2]. 0. https://eservices2.mha.gov.sg/ros/search-society 1. ht…

> Their about page claims non profit, Wikipedia and others say registered in Singapore but I don’t see anything under “ghost” as a society [0] or as a charity [1].

Ghost Foundation is a Company Limited by Guarantee [1] in Singapore. The UEN is 201605007D.

As I wrote above, it's not a charity, and therefore doesn't need to have charitable goals.

[1] https://ghost.org/changelog/moving-to-singapore/

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