Goodbye, WordPress... Hello Ghost

You may have noticed that the website is a little different. In the last iteration of this blog, I had decided to go with old faithful, WordPress, as the CMS backend. I hated every single moment of it. I can't stand the editor UI, the plugins are just as clunky as they used to be, and it was overall just a bad time.

I thought about moving over to Hugo, but I paid for 4 years of a VPS, so I decided to go with something a little heftier. Namely, Ghost CMS. I have used Ghost before, but that was the Pro version. Now, I'm self-hosting it, and that makes me like it more.

The UI

For one thing, I really like the UI. Maybe it's not as extensive as WP, but it sure is prettier. And for me, that matters. It also has all the features I want without going overboard. Namely, I can write in Markdown and it just works. It has some of the Gutenberg shit that WP has, but nothing out of hand, and it all makes sense.

Add to that it just feels simpler and more comfy, I'm already loving it. Maybe that feeling will go away, if I find features that are missing, but so far, this is great.

Oh, and it has word count right there at the bottom of the post editor. You have to go digging for that in WP.

Room for growth

I don't really have plans to monetize this blog. Ever. But I could see myself doing a newsletter or something like that, and Ghost will facilitate that for me.

I've not played much with the analytics, but I think that will be mostly "members" related. I will still need to find my own analytics, but that's something else to investigate later.

I also have found that this is faster than WP, which makes me happy. The entire operation under WP was much heavier and bloated. This feels better.

What's Changed, and What Will Change?

If you subscribed to the RSS feed, that URL may have changed. It is now this. So if you were subscribed before, you'll probably need to do so again. I promise this will be the last time. If I knew what the URL was last time, I could most likely forward it.

I'm also likely going to be changing the theme on the site. I am running one of the default ones right now and while it will do, it's not great. So, I'll be looking for something more my style. If you come back here in a few days and the paint has changed color, know it's just me looking for what suits me best.

Finally, IDK what I'll do with comments at the moment. I will probably stick with Disqus, but we'll see. I'll figure that out soon.