Selecting Ghost as blogging platform
I have always enjoyed writing and I've had various blogs throughout the years: WordPress blogs, static site generated ones, Tumblr, etc. I haven't had an active blog for a while now, though, until recently when I created one on Substack. I considered Medium as well, but it feels like it has fallen from grace. There are other alternatives as well, such as Dev.to. However, I didn't really enjoy the thought of relying on somebody else's platform. Medium was once the go-to place for tech bloggers, but now it's treated like the plague. Who knows which platform will see the same demise? That's why I wasn't totally stoked about Substack either.
I have set up and maintained many WordPress blogs in the past, and used it myself for blogging. The core is quite good I think. However, I think the ecosystem of plugins and themes feels rather trashy. Sure, there are a lot of plugins and themes. But most of the popular plugins inject various banners, ads for premium tiers, notifications about donating, etc. Many "premium" themes come with what seems to be called "block builders", that attempt to change how WordPress natively behaves with regards to design and editing posts. It's easy to end up with an installation that feels clunky, with the whole kitchen sink of features.
That's why I instead went with a self-hosted Ghost blog. I installed it as a Docker container, so there was very little setup needed. Ghost has existed for many years, seems to be well-maintained and is one of the biggest contenders to WordPress. Looking at their feature updates, there seems to be a steady stream of new things being added. But primarily I like that it seems polished, focused, and high-quality. I could have gone the static site generator route as well, but I wanted something more interactive, akin to Substack. And since it's self-hosted, it feels more future-proof.
My intention is to use this blog for sharing thoughts I have about subjects that interest me: computer programming, Linux, cryptocurrencies, self-hosting, freelancing, self-employment, and related topics. You can subscribe if you'd like to stay up to date and receive emails when new content is published.
