Running my blog on Ghost

In March 2021 I decided that my blog was looking a bit tired and I was also fed up managing the whole platform as well as writing blogs.  So I took the plunge and converted my blog from Grav to Ghost.

And the short answer to how I'm finding the platform change is, I'm loving it!! 😊

I've been so productive since I did away what I now consider a complex blog post process.

So why more productive?

I never considered the process I had when creating and posting blogs on the Grav platform complex when I was actually using it but since switching to Ghost I've released how hard I was making it.

With Grav I wrote all my blog posts in Markdown, and using Visual Studio Code made that an enjoyable experience but it meant that at times I had to fight with formatting quite a bit.

Once that was done I then had to push the changes to Azure DevOps, check the changes in my Test blog environment and then push the changes to Production.

I had reasons for creating that process (mostly to learn how to use the various components), but thinking about it now it was so complex and long winded for my blog.

Now, I open up my browser, go to the admin interface Ghost provide me and start writing.  And if I start writing on one device and then change to another that half started blog is there for me to finish.  That was a lot harder to manage in my previous environment.

I can quickly preview what the blog will look like in the Ghost admin console whenever I want and when I'm ready to publish I can just hit a button or I can schedule it quickly and easily.  

I can even do all of this from my mobile phone, so if I'm feeling creative on the go then I can do that. 😊

I don't maintain the backend

My instance of Ghost is hosted and run by Ghost.  So that's another big positive for me. I don't have to maintain the backend.  I don't need to worry about security patches or upgrading to the latest version and the work and implications that comes with that.  

Ghost do that and do that very well.  It's seamless to me.  I'm obviously placing a lot of trust in them to maintain the platform but so far it's been well placed.  

I understand that lots of people want to have full control of their blog from frontend to backend, but I'm happy to give some of that control over.   I've spent many years looking after all of the platform, time to focus on what matters most to me and that's writing blogs. 😊

Performance of old versus new

Previously when I have changed blogging platforms I've used GTMetrix performance reports as good indicators if the change has been good for end users from a responsive point of view. One of my old Grav reports gave me this information back:

This wasn't bad but it could have been better as well.

Now with Ghost this is the report that I am getting back.

GTMetrix have slightly changed their reporting, but you can see the latest report is pretty good, with no real issues there.

Would you recommend it?

I do love the Ghost platform, it's a very capable blogging platform and a lot of people I know use it. So I'd highly recommend it, you can look to doing the hosting yourself if that's something you want.  I know a lot of people have created guides on hosting it in Azure or on containers.

But for me hosting Ghost on the Ghost platform is best option and is working out really well for me, and I'd recommend that for sure.

Let me know if you have any questions or thoughts on Ghost, would love to hear from you.