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

blog.ghost.org

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

#51

Post by harveynick »

HHalvi wrote: post #48

I remember looking for better alternatives for WordPress(i felt they alienated the bloggers largely) and came across an article about Ghost. I was instantly hooked to the whole thing to this day. I just wish the non hosted versions get a better way to update to the latest version as well as a (official) script to automate the install easily.

I think this is what you're looking for: https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost-CLI

I've only used it for a local install when playing with my site theme, but it worked great (albeit quite picky about the versions of the dependencies).

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

#52

Post by vezycash »

wolco wrote: post #29
prophesi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's for a managed WP host. I agree that the $50/mo price comes out of nowhere, but you're still not going to find one for $20/mo as you would with Ghost. Ghost is 20 times faster. And once you add a single WP plugin, it's 100 times faster.

Can't find 20 dollars a month for a managed wp? For 4 dollars a month you can. https://www.siteground.com/wpbeginner-managed 50 dollars a month seems extremely costly. For that amount $600 a year it would be cheaper to hire someone to self host for you.

There's $1-2 monthly hosting for WP

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

#53

Post by harveynick »

a_imho wrote: post #44
chatmasta wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s absurd because if you sit down and do the math, you’ll find there are basically no monetary advantages to paying yourself out of a 501c3 vs LLC/SCorp/CCorp. And even if you did find an advantage, there is no way it saves more money than you could make by selling your company. You cannot sell a non profit.

Still don't understand, when your organization pays less tax, you have more money to pay yourself, thus your salary will be higher. Conversely, there is little to no reason for being setup as a non-profit in Ghost's case. [1] https://www.upcounsel.com/llc-vs-nonprofit

They're a non-profit, not a charity. In the podcast linked to in this post they say quite specifically that being a non-profit doesn't give them tax advantages.

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

#54

Post by johnonolan »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #46

We use hosted Ghost for our blog. For the most part, it's been great. My biggest complaint is that Ghost doesn't yet have a built in SSL/TLS option (e.g. Let's Encrypt). Their recommendation is to use Cloudflare. It's fine for hobbyist or personal blogs, but as a corporation it's basically prevented us from using SSL. We're in a regulated industry and need to do appropriate vetting of vendors. Onboarding a blog platf…

We do have all of those things :)

For self-hosters, Ghost-CLI has deep Let's Encrypt integration. The tool will automatically guide you through provisioning an SSL certificate during the install process.

On Ghost(Pro) we have full end to end SSL support (you're right we used to only support CF's UniverSSL but that is no longer the case) - so anyone who uses a custom domain with Ghost(Pro) will automatically have an SSL cert provisioned and deployed for them in the background. For business customers who require the use of their own, custom certificates, there a few extra steps but we support that too.

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

#55

Post by iends »

I would love to switch to hosted ghost, but the pricing makes very little sense for a personal blog. An article will make the front page of hn or some larger subreddits and I'll get 30k views in just a few hours. I'd have to pay close to $200/mo to get the same number of page views I can get with a $10/VPS that I ssh into maybe once every 6 months to patch.

The pricing levels simply do not offer enough page views.

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

#56

Post by snowwolf »

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.

If you’re setup as a non-profit and you reinvest all profit, what do you do if you get to the point that you are making more profit than you can reasonably reinvest? Build up a large cash reserve?

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

#57

Post by mikekij »

snowwolf wrote: post #56
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.

If you’re setup as a non-profit and you reinvest all profit, what do you do if you get to the point that you are making more profit than you can reasonably reinvest? Build up a large cash reserve?

I came here to ask this exact question.

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

#58

Post by amelius »

snowwolf wrote: post #56
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.

If you’re setup as a non-profit and you reinvest all profit, what do you do if you get to the point that you are making more profit than you can reasonably reinvest? Build up a large cash reserve?

Use your imagination! It's always possible to draw a more ambitious roadmap and reinvest more.
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