Ghost is an

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

content management system A content management system (CMS) is computer software used to manage the creation and modification of digital content ( content management).''Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy''. Ann Rockley, Pamela Kostur, Steve Manning. New ...

platform written in

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

and distributed under the

MIT License The MIT License is a permissive software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1980s. As a permissive license, it puts very few restrictions on reuse and therefore has high license compatibility. Unl ...

, 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 Kickstarter, PBC is an American Benefit corporation, public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York City, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative project ...

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 initial concept for the Ghost platform was presented in a November 2012 blog post by project founder John O'Nolan, who was also the former deputy lead of the

WordPress WordPress (WP, or WordPress.org) is a web content management system. It was originally created as a tool to publish blogs but has evolved to support publishing other web content, including more traditional websites, electronic mailing list, ma ...

user interface team. O'Nolan presented Ghost as an "idealistic and fictional" solution to the increasing difficulty of using WordPress to build

blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

s, its original purpose, rather than as a more complex

. Following considerable demand and positive feedback on the post from the community 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 Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and Alternative Finance, alternative finance, to fund projects "withou ...

campaign on

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 Seth W. Godin, also known under his pen name as "F. X. Nine" (born 1960), is an American author, marketing expert, entrepreneur, and a former dot-com business executive. Early life and education Seth W. Godin graduated from Williamsville East H ...

, Leo Babauta,

Darren Rowse Darren Rowse (known online as Problogger; born 27 April 1972) is an Australian blogger, speaker, consultant and founder of several blogs and blog networks, including ProBlogger.net and digital-photography-school.com. He lives in Melbourne, Aus ...

Tucker Max Tucker Max (born September 27, 1975) is an American author and public speaker. He chronicles his drinking and sexual encounters in the form of short story, short stories on his website ''TuckerMax.com'', which has received millions of visitors ...

, major companies such as Woo-Themes, Envato, and

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

. 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 GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

as of version 0.3.3 – amended with bugfixes and security updates. Ghost announced plans to support

ActivityPub ActivityPub is a Communication protocol, protocol and open standard for Decentralised system, decentralized Social networking service, social networking. It provides a Client–server model, client-to-server (C2S) API for creating and modifying c ...

in 2024. Some notable platform users include

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

Tinder Tinder is easily Combustibility and flammability, combustible material used to Firemaking, start a fire. Tinder is a finely divided, open material which will begin to glow under a shower of sparks. Air is gently wafted over the glowing tinder unt ...

Sky News Sky News is a British free-to-air television news channel, live stream news network and news organisation. Sky News is distributed via an English-language radio news service, and through online channels. It is owned by Sky Group, a division of ...

VEVO Vevo LLC ( , an abbreviation for "Video Evolution", stylized in all caps until 2013) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational video hosting service, best known for providing music videos to YouTube. The service is also available ...

, and

Zappos Zappos.com is an American online shoe and clothing retailer based in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States. The company was founded in 1999 by Nick Swinmurn and launched under the domain name Shoesite.com. In July 2009, Amazon acquired Zappos in an ...

Foundation

The Ghost project is managed by a

nonprofit organization A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or so ...

headquartered in

Singapore Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...

called the Ghost Foundation, which was established following the Kickstarter campaign. The foundation currently employs 25 full-time members of staff to work on the Ghost project and the surrounding community infrastructure.

Business model

Ghost is free to download and use. In addition, the Foundation offers a paid platform for users who prefer a managed solution, as an alternative to self-hosting. For a monthly fee, users can build a Ghost website or blog, on a fully managed installation, with weekly updates and access to email support. The hosted platform is owned and operated by the Ghost Foundation, and all revenue generated from the service is used to fund further development of the software, and the project's infrastructure.

Platform

Ghost is coded in Node.js, a server-side

execution engine, and an Ember.js admin client. Since version 2.0, posts can be written using a

WYSIWYG In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for what you see is what you get, refers to software that allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed document, web ...

editor; in earlier versions, only

Markdown Markdown is a lightweight markup language for creating formatted text using a plain-text editor. John Gruber created Markdown in 2004 as an easy-to-read markup language. Markdown is widely used for blogging and instant messaging, and also used ...

was supported. Ghost CMS (

) can be used as either a traditional or

headless CMS A headless content management system, or headless CMS, is a back end-only web content management system that acts primarily as a content repository. A headless CMS makes content accessible via an API for display on any device, without a built-in ...

Security

On May 3, 2020, Ghost confirmed that its Ghost(Pro) platform was infected with crypto-mining malware. The virus affected both Ghost(Pro) servers and Ghost.org billing services. No user data was compromised, and user credentials were not stored in plain text.

References

External links

* {{Official website 2013 software Blog software Free software programmed in JavaScript Kickstarter-funded software Blog hosting services Free content management systems Software using the MIT license