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Democratising publishing

john.onolan.org

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Re: Democratising publishing

#51

Post by adolph »

23B1 wrote: post #45
jdtig wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

Neither myself nor Hannah own any shares, assets, domains, trademarks, or other companies related to Ghost. Everything is owned by the Foundation.

our intention is to expand the seats on Ghost's board of trustees beyond myself and Hannah.

I don’t see how this is fundamentally different from the WP Foundation approach. It still depends on people who despite claiming an intention haven’t given up control.

Re: Democratising publishing

#52

Post by adolph »

ValentineC wrote: post #50
adolph wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Seems like it’s filings and meetings are done about this time of year. [0] The move to Singapore is super interesting, esp with dsivers input. Thanks for linking to it.

0. https://www.tis.bizfile.gov.sg/ngbtisinternet/faces/oracle/w...

Re: Democratising publishing

#53

Post by shortformblog »

0xEF wrote: post #47
shortformblog wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I gave October a pretty serious look about five or six years ago. I like the fact that you can code in the interface, which can feel more friendly than competing platforms. But I thought the community hadn’t reached a level of scale that I thought was enough that I could trust it.

Also, I know that you have said you’re willing to pay and you’re not necessarily looking for FOSS, but I will point out there was some licensing drama with October a few years ago that led to a full-on fork: https://wintercms.com/blog/post/we-have-forked-october-cms

You may also find Kirby a good fit: https://getkirby.com

Re: Democratising publishing

#54

Post by saaaaaam »

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…

Drupal makes me cry. And as other folk here have said, just stick ghost on your own host. I have a dev version running on a raspberry pi on my desk so that I can test ideas locally. Obviously I could have done that on my mac, but I just wanted to see what would happen and it's fine. You could probably run a live site off it no problem, so long as it wasn't heavily trafficked.

Re: Democratising publishing

#55

Post by johnonolan »

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…

> I don't think the point of the article is that everything was intentional.

Author of the article here - that was exactly the point of the article.

Re: Democratising publishing

#56

Post by 0xEF »

0xEF wrote: post #47
shortformblog wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Had no idea about the drama surrounding October. Thank you for the recommendations. Kirby looks nice, as well, at first glance.

Will be trying both Winter and Kirby this weekend. I am really struggling getting Ghost up and running properly (LEMP stack). It seems to install fine, but breaks my nginx config so when I go to access the admin page (/ghost/" rel="nofollow">https:///ghost/) I get a 404 error.

Re: Democratising publishing

#57

Post by shortformblog »

0xEF wrote: post #56
0xEF wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Had no idea about the drama surrounding October. Thank you for the recommendations. Kirby looks nice, as well, at first glance. Will be trying both Winter and Kirby this weekend. I am really struggling getting Ghost up and running properly (LEMP stack). It seems to install fine, but breaks my nginx config so when I go to access the admin page ( /ghost/" rel="nofollow">https:// /ghost/ ) I get a 404 error.

Ghost is Node-based, so no PHP. (Shouldn’t functionally matter much as it’s designed in a way that you don’t need to mess in the code once you have everything set.) Not sure about your install process, but make sure your routes.yaml is properly set:

https://www.mellen.io/ghost-blog-404-error-fix/

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