Ghost is a free and open source blogging platform written in JavaScript and distributed under the MIT License, designed to simplify the process of online publishing for individual bloggers as well as online publications. The concept of the Ghost platform was first floated publicly in November 2012 in a blog post by project founder John O'Nolan, which generated enough response to justify coding a prototype version with collaborator Hannah Wolfe. The first public version of Ghost, released October 2013, was financed by a successful Kickstarter campaign which achieved its initial funding goal of £25,000 in 11 hours and went on to raise a final total of £196,362 during the 29-day campaign.
History
The idea for the Ghost platform was first written about at the start of November 2012, in a blog post by project founder John O'Nolan, the former deputy lead for the WordPressUser Interface team, after becoming frustrated with the complexity of using WordPress as a blog rather than a content management system. Following considerable demand and positive feedback from the community on the initial blog post, O'Nolan recruited long-time friend Hannah Wolfe to help him create an initial prototype of the platform. On April 29, 2013 – O'Nolan released a video of the prototype in a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter with a goal of £25,000 to fund the completion of initial development work. The project was successfully funded in 11 hours and went on to raise a final total of £196,362 during the 29-day campaign. The project relied on backing both from individuals as well as sponsorship from companies who had an interest in seeing the platform succeed. Notable backers included Seth Godin, Leo Babauta, Darren Rowse, Tucker Max, major companies such as Woo-Themes, Envato, and Microsoft. On September 19, 2013 – The first public version of Ghost was released, named Kerouac as an early release to people who had backed the Kickstarter campaign. On October 14, 2013 – Ghost was made available for the first time as an extended-release to the general public via GitHub as of version 0.3.3 – amended with bugfixes and security updates. Some notable platform users include IBM, Tinder, Sky News, VEVO, and Zappos.
Ghost Foundation
The Ghost project is managed by a nonprofit organization headquartered in Singapore called the Ghost Foundation, which was established following the Kickstarter campaign. The foundation currently employs 10 full-time members of staff to work on the Ghost project and the surrounding community infrastructure.
Business model
The Ghost blogging software is free to download and use. In addition, the Foundation offers a hosted platform for users who would like to run a live blog on the internet, as an alternative to configuring a server and running a manual install of the software package. For a monthly fee, users receive an account with fully managed Ghost blogs with automatic backups and updates as well as email support. As the hosted platform is owned and operated by the Ghost Foundation, all revenue generated from the service is subsequently used to fund further development of the open source software and the project's infrastructure.
Platform
Ghost is coded in Node.js, a server-side JavaScript execution engine, based on Google's V8, and an Ember.js admin client. The interface is intended to be simple, and an analytics dashboard is planned, as of January 2014. Editing is facilitated using a split screen display. Instead of WYSIWYG, the platform uses Markdown for formatting. Ghost CMS can be used as either a traditional or headless CMS making it a versatile blogging platform.
Security
On May 03, 2020 Ghost confirmed that it was hacked. The hack attack affected both Ghost Pro sites and Ghost.org billing services. However, no credit card information was thought to have been compromised, and user credentials were not stored in plain text.
