9 ms·

Microsoft Throws its Weight Behind Ghost

107 points by krisroadruck 13y ago

cimorene12 13y ago
I backed Ghost on Kickstarter and I really like the idea of an ultra simple platform. I have had blogs for years on Tumblr and Blogger, but I'd certainly be open to using Nolan's work.
- krisroadruck 13y ago
  Same. Looking forward to getting beta access in a couple of weeks. I built a little solar powered raspberry pi node box that'd certainly benefit from a little node-based blog :-D
  - joeblau 13y ago
    I'm looking forward to getting the BETA as well. I have been e-stalking this project :)
rquantz 13y ago
I've been thinking about what should replace Wordpress in the CMS space (as opposed to blogging). There are a lot of aspects of Wordpress that make it great, and a lot of things that make it absolutely terrible. I think part of its problem is that it seems intended to be a platform that non-developers can maintain themselves, while presenting features that really require a developer. As a result, it is not a suitable environment either for non-coders or coders. I'd love to see a platform that is easily deployed on shared hosting (written in php, using mysql) but that lends itself better to version control and switching environments. It should keep configuration in plain text instead of in the database, and it should allow easy definition of node types in addition to the standards (post, page, comment, etc.). These should also be defined in plain text instead of in the database (I'm looking at you, Drupal). Meanwhile, theming should be just as easy as with Wordpress. Anyway, it's good to see others trying to enter the blogging platform space and compete with Wordpress, but I really want to see a truly good CMS come along.
- krisroadruck 13y ago
  There have been a ton of CMS's written I think the problem is just adoption. Without mass adoption you don't get much in the way of ready extensibility. Thats one area wordpress really has the space on lockdown.
  - rquantz 13y ago
    Are there any other CMSs that are actually better than WP but that haven't been adopted? I've seen some that are intriguing, but ultimately most seem to have the same problems, such as stored configuration in the DB.
    - akamaka 13y ago
      I've been using ProcessWire, and it's been fantastic to work with. However, it stores user-defined template schemas in a MySQL database. Does that pose a big problem for you? I'm really curious to know what kind of troubles you've run into with configuration in the DB.
      - rquantz 13y ago
        It poses a problem for deployment, collaboration, version control, etc. For instance, a new data type (not a problem in WP, but you could substitute meta fields or something) will frequently require some new code as well -- a widget, template, or whatever. Once I've built this in my dev environment, tested in the staging environment, and deployed live I will have had to set up the new data type in three different places, or written a script that does it, but most CMSs don't provide those tools, so you would be stuck hacking around with internal functions that might or might not be stable. Meanwhile, any other developers will then have to replicate the same changes in their dev environment. Version control exists to solve these problems, but when this stuff is stored in the database it is a lot harder to consistently reicate changes. I'm sure people come up with solutions that don't involve replicating configuration in the GUI, but my point is it should be baked into the CMS.
- krapp 13y ago
methodin 13y ago
What happens when the blogs that inevitably grow bigger than a platform need to turn into a community and something more? Surely just a blogging platform will not suffice. How many people actually use Wordpress for just a blog, anyway? This is all reminiscent of the early blogging platforms that did one thing well but in reality most people need more than that one thing if it's something more than an area to post personal musings.
- lukeschlather 13y ago
  if all you need is a place to post personal musings, Jekyll is really al you need. the missing piece then is just a good WYSIWYG markdown editor.
  - dkuntz2 13y ago
    Maybe. I've been using a host of static site generators for about a year now, and for the less serious blog they seem to get in the way. I'd prefer to have everything online, accessible from any computer with an internet connection. Posting quick, little thoughts is not something Jekyll or other static site generators do well. For the more serious blog, which has infrequent and longer posts, I really like the static site generator, because it lets me keep everything together and easily deal with it locally.
    - hellweaver666 13y ago
      This weekend I've been playing with Kirby. It's a static site generator powered by PHP that runs on Markdown powered text files but it also has an optional control panel for editing posts if you need that.
      - dkuntz2 13y ago
        I looked at Kirby. My problem is I don't really want to pay for it. Were I to pay, I'd probably go with Statamic, which is similar to Kirby, but looks nicer. Mostly I don't want to pay because I like the idea of open source, and having the ability to submit a fix if I find a bug appeals to me. And partially because I'm cheap.
gabemart 13y ago
O’Nolan, a former WordPress project lead himself , opines that WordPress has grown up and is no longer really about blogs anymore. It’s become a full-fledged content management system, burdened with a lot of unnecessary complexity for those that are just looking to manage a blog. WP is nothing close to a full-fledged content management system, and if it's burdened by anything, it's all the leftover cruft from the days when it was just about blogging. I use WP every day and I'm really grateful it exists. But from my perspective, the problem is not "WP is so great at content management we need to develop something just about blogging". The problem is "Lots of people have cleverly managed to hack WP into running as a general purpose CMS because there's such a wealth of support, knowledge and extensability surrounding it". I'be be much more interested in a new modern, flexible CMS built for that purpose from the ground up than I am about a new blogging software.
- krapp 13y ago
  What would a proper CMS have in your opinion that Wordpress lacks?
  - woah 13y ago
    I've actually contemplated the idea of doing a node CMS for use on client work. Wordpress lacks nothing, it is just a badly designed architecture with an inconsistent API (for example there are 3 different functions to display a 'loop' of posts, each one has options worded slightly differently with slightly different effects) Some things that would be good: 1. Contenteditable from the frontend- for when the client just wants to change that one sentence on the third paragraph on the product page or whatever. http://createjs.org/ http://createjs.org/ seems to be a pretty good ready made solution. 2. Repeating layouts- I design and code a repeating element (like photos on the team page or whatever), and the client has an interface to add or remove units, at which point they get updated wherever they are on the site. 3. NoSQL db. SQL is good when one is balancing the books of a large corporation, or doing a survey of the heights and wattages of every streetlight in the country, but it is not a logical solution for displaying documents on the web. It would also be really nice to have a database that could be put in revision control and deployed along with the rest of the site files, as the line between content and templates on CMS sites is a very thin one. https://github.com/felixge/node-dirty https://github.com/felixge/node-dirty is intriguing, but I don't know if there are any unforeseen issues with this. 4. Blogging. Hopefully we could just integrate tightly with Ghost or something like it.
HNLogInShit 13y ago
Why does Node.js make a good platform for blog software? I thought the point of Node.js was to build systems that handle lots of atomic events efficiently. Blogging would seem like the exact opposite of that situation.
stickhandle 13y ago
In the end, who cares. I'm intrigued by Ghost. I signed up for access ... but I have also been intrigued by the many alternatives to WP out there - Octopress, Squarespace, Kirby, on and on. That's because I'm a hacker. But ... in the end WP is to this space as Excel is the spreadsheets. Its just too good. Has so much to offer. As long as we're talking about presenting html/css/js in a browser for non-dynamic sites, WP pretty much does everything. Its just lost its shiny|new status. Bloat? An easy and convenient insult. Truth is Excel has capabilities I will never use ... but it pleases me to know they are there if/when I need them. What gets lost in the argument that WP is so big, so capable that its not a blog engine anymore but rather a cms, is that it is entirely capable of powering just your blog with a whole bunch of features you won't use. But when you decide to do "X", you can pretty much guarantee you'll find a quality option/extension to handle it. Its interesting to the likes of folks on HN (and I count myself among this crowd) to find new and exciting ways to do things, but if the outcome is the same ... IOW - what is truly different. It can't just be "how", but "why" and "what".
- malandrew 13y ago
  My biggest complaint about Wordpress when I first had to mess around with the codebase last year is that it is an exercise in masochism. We've moved to much better tools for HTML templating in the last 10 years, yet WordPress in 2013 is stuck with the most awkward approach I've ever dealt with.
  - stickhandle 13y ago
    "Most awkward"? Really? Its not nice and it definitely carries around some baggage that is a direct result of its evolutionary history, but there is always a way to get what you need. I won't defend its beauty. But i guess my questions to any WP vs. X questions would be - 1. Do you know what you need tomorrow? 2. Are you interested in getting it done or in the elegance of the solution.
    - dkuntz2 13y ago
      Why can't you get it done and have an elegant solution? WordPress kinda forces you away from elegant solutions, but other CMSs don't...
blahbl4hblah 13y ago
Microsoft wants to capture some of their dwindling browser share? This dumbass need to check the stats again...
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
Fearless_Shultz 13y ago
I'm curious how many folks have issues with WordPress from a pure user / author perspective so outside of how the code is written or a site is installed Also what are your thoughts on how responsive Automattic are to user feedback for publishers?
- dkuntz2 13y ago
  I've found that since WordPress switched to the current sidebar navigation over the old one (the four main headings, of which Write was first, iirc) it's a pain to write blog posts. I'm also not a fan of the large number of additional options available for posts. I'd rather have zero options, just write text and hit post. I understand why it has all of the options, but I'm partial to simpler systems that do one thing really well, as opposed to big systems (like WP) that do lots of things acceptably.
narrator 13y ago
Blogs are way too simple to reinvent every few years. Wordpress is fine. Can't we move on to something more complicated than Blogs and Crud apps?
- dkuntz2 13y ago
  I agree, we don't need to reinvent blogging every few years, but WordPress has moved beyond just a blogging platform, and is a full-featured CMS. Blogging is no longer the main emphasis of WordPress. Were WordPress to refocus on blogging features, instead of adding lots of other stuff, that'd be awesome.
- jerf 13y ago
  It's just the turn of the wheel. Should Ghost succeed, odds are quite good that in about seven years, you'll be reading about how old and crufty Ghost is, held back by it's aging Node.js platform, and how some new hotness or other is coming along to give you just blogging (or whatever). To a first approximation, every web project starts life as a "clean, simple X without all that cruft". It is the destiny of most projects to follow that with A: failure or B: becoming the next pile of sludge to inspire a "clean, simple X".
  - narrator 13y ago
    This is where statically typed code bases really shine IMHO. I've seen >10 year old Java code bases that are maintainable because of all the automated re-factoring that can be done to clean up naming inconsistencies and deprecate various mistakes. With dynamic languages cruft and little mistakes just keep building up till people give up trying to maintain it and want to start over.
    - gnaritas 13y ago
      Automated refactoring came from dynamic languages. Just because the popular ones lack it doesn't mean it's not done. Smalltalk's refactoring browser works very well.
shadowOfShadow 13y ago
Why ghost? Not PHP & MySQL. Why MS + ghost? Services in Azure. Node is already there.
jmspring 13y ago
"Compared to WordPress’s bulky editor and aging PHP code base, the difference is striking." Well established product versus something that has not been around awhile. It has nothing to do with the language the code was written in, it is a product with a past versus a new product that has learned from preceding projects.
grannyg00se 13y ago
"an ease to writing that makes it pleasant to compose text formatted for the web...Compared to WordPress’s bulky editor and aging PHP code base, the difference is striking." I don't know anything about WordPress's bulky editor, but how does the code base have any relevance to front end usability?
- adolph 13y ago
  And when did £5,000 (maybe plus) become Microsoft throwing its weight behind something?
- robryan 13y ago
  Was thinking the same. I can see what they might be getting at if you compare Wordpress + mods vs clean Ghost. I doubt once considered fully featured that Ghost would be so much more efficient as to make it a key point of differentiation, for the average small blogger anyway.
thatthatis 13y ago
Great, but why can't we download it yet?
- jamesgeck0 13y ago
  Because they promised early beta access to Kickstarter backers. The lowest tier of rewarded backers gets access within the next week, and the codebase will be open to everyone some indeterminate short amount of time after that. I'd be surprised if it the delay was more than a month or so.
  - 7schlaefer 13y ago
    That is good to hear because this one looks pretty great and I was downright annoyed when I found out it were not out yet.
ddw 13y ago
I'm really excited for Ghost for the simple reason that it's written in Node. That means if this really takes off there will be pluggable modules that can do anything that you'd like without adding to the code base. I think it would make a lot of sense if the core team doesn't add much to the initial code base and rather iterates on the UI right and works on growing the community because that is what is going to make the project take off. Really smart move by Microsoft, if for no other reason than tons of people are going to be saying "wait, whut, where do I install this?" soon and if deployment is first class to Azure at least they'll have a lot of new people in the door. Also I think there's plenty of room for evolution in blogging. There are so many places that we create content now whether it be audio, photos, video or microblogging and there isn't a widely used way of curating your online self at all of these mediums. My personal website is on Syte (https://github.com/rigoneri/syte https://github.com/rigoneri/syte) for this very reason that it displays my social network content next to my blog posts in a way that is more coherent than just a widget.
ilaksh 13y ago
I actually think that if a project like Ghost becomes really popular it is almost guaranteed to end up with a full scale plugin system and therefore become a type of operating system despite what the founder thinks about that. I think we do need something with an updated stack that has capabilities somewhat like WordPress. Here is an idea that I started on a while back. (Obviously not very pretty and needs a lot of refinement.) http://vimeo.com/43784316 http://vimeo.com/43784316
krisroadruck 13y ago
If you can believe it, this story was originally pitched to ReadWrite. They rejected it and instead ran 10 stories about the new iPhone that day. The following link is a pic of the analytics stats on this article from today. Thanks guys, over 9000 thanks to you :-) http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5511/9769041391_c52d600437_o.png http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5511/9769041391_c52d600437_o.p...
pearjuice 13y ago
Wordpress is plug and play on almost any webhost out there (some even have installers for it). Ghost is node.js which is barely supported by webhosting companies (you will most likely need a VPS or some specific node.js HaaS, at least). Will this not be a huge barrier to achieve the same traction Wordpress has?
px1999 13y ago
TL;DR: a small team at Microsoft (modern.ie) have a site old-ie compatibility scanner that they've written in node and want to integrate into a CMS. This probably isn't a larger strategy or play at Microsoft. It might be a sign of internal change among developers there, which might change their business strategy at some point in the future, but they're definitely don't seem to be "throwing their weight around" just yet. They already have far larger investments in plenty of other CMSes: * Sharepoint (the goose that lays the golden eggs), * Umbraco (which IIRC runs asp.net, iis.net, windowsazure.com, and possibly [parts of] technet and msdn), * Orchard (which is theirs, albeit through the OuterCurve foundation, which is one of MS' OSS outreaches), * MCMS (which is horribly old & expensive, but still out there and in use), * A bunch of internal CMSes, and other stuff that they developed themselves to tie in with backend systems (eg CRM) Hell, they did more with Oxite before abandoning that than they're planning with Ghost. Maybe MS as a company want to get more into node, but that doesn't really seem in line with their larger strategy (even though they definitely are starting to embrace OSS more, particularly on the web teams) - so it's probably just likely that one team wanted somewhere that they could test out the library they've written.
- krisroadruck 13y ago
  the plugin wasn't what got them contributor status. The $50K they paid was. Given that accounts for fully 1/4th of the total amount raised.... I'd say its not such a pittance as a plugin.
  - px1999 13y ago
    Aah, I didn't see that in the article - I can find a kickstarter post referencing them as a partner, but didn't find anything talking about a 50k figure. I guess that figure does represent a significant investment (their contributions to other CMSes aside), particularly at the current early stage of Ghost's development.
scheff 13y ago
Why are we still writing in mark down? Fair enough, as a techie, it's just assumed you will learn another "language" and be productive. But a creative writer shouldn't have to think "how many #'s do I need to press? what's the shortcode for italics?" They just want to be free to create. But they also want to see their masterpiece coming to life in all it's glory. We've mastered the "Word editor" and it gives immediate feedback without reaching for a reference manual, why would we (inclusive: all writers) take a step backwards?
- mfn 13y ago
  One benefit is that it's portable: your text will be rendered properly with the correct formatting anywhere markdown is supported (github, forum comments, blog post, etc). It essentially frees you from having to worry about layout and visual styling, which shouldn't interfere with the writing process.
  - rat87 13y ago
    There's no markdown standard (although I think some implementers were talking about it) beyond the original implementation, some implementations may not even support that I believe hacker news supports a subset. It is portable in the sense that you get(probably browser portable) simple html after running it through a probably open source markdown implementation as opposed to complex word formatting formats like odf or docx.
- debacle 13y ago
  > what's the shortcode for italics? If you really have qualms about remembering * ... *, I think you probably have more problems on your hands than not being free to create.
lcnmrn 13y ago
This already exists today: no need for funding, no need for self hosting, Microsoft is not involved in any way, beautiful typography, local storage for writing, nice profiles, stories ranking, a responsive design, made by a designer who writes code. An export to Jekyll feature is coming soon, so you can take the markdown documents to any other platform or just make a blog out of it. Give it a try: http://markdawn.com/ http://markdawn.com/
- 7schlaefer 13y ago
  Excuse me, but what exactly is this supposed to be? I took about 5 minutes to figure out the UI, there are bugs with logging back in after (accidentally) logging out, and it throws what I write in some kind of global timeline thing? EDIT Not to mention the fact that I WANT to self-host!
  - lcnmrn 13y ago
    It isn't ready for a "show HN". Global timeline is there for getting exposure. It looks intimidating now, but it shouldn't. Thanks for trying it! Self-hosting and updating an entire web app is not very realistic these days, but exporting in a ready to deploy site is a feature I'm thinking about. It isn't implemented yet. I don't want this to have a private mode, everything is public. You can't guarantee privacy these days. My target is more towards what Medium and Svtble are doing, than WordPress.
    - 7schlaefer 13y ago
      >Self-hosting and updating an entire web app is not very realistic these days, but exporting in a ready to deploy site is a feature I'm thinking about. It isn't implemented yet. Ah, now I get it. That would be a nice feature. >I don't want this to have a private mode, everything is public. Is there a preview functionality? If not, that would be an important feature. >You can't guarantee privacy these days That's true, but you can still give users a little privacy if you want to. I personally wouldn't want to write on that platform without a drafts/preview folder, but that might just be me.

107 points by krisroadruck 13y ago

I backed Ghost on Kickstarter and I really like the idea of an ultra simple platform. I have had blogs for years on Tumblr and Blogger, but I'd certainly be open to using Nolan's work.

krisroadruck 13y ago
Same. Looking forward to getting beta access in a couple of weeks. I built a little solar powered raspberry pi node box that'd certainly benefit from a little node-based blog :-D
- joeblau 13y ago
  I'm looking forward to getting the BETA as well. I have been e-stalking this project :)

rquantz 13y ago

I've been thinking about what should replace Wordpress in the CMS space (as opposed to blogging). There are a lot of aspects of Wordpress that make it great, and a lot of things that make it absolutely terrible. I think part of its problem is that it seems intended to be a platform that non-developers can maintain themselves, while presenting features that really require a developer. As a result, it is not a suitable environment either for non-coders or coders. I'd love to see a platform that is easily deployed on shared hosting (written in php, using mysql) but that lends itself better to version control and switching environments. It should keep configuration in plain text instead of in the database, and it should allow easy definition of node types in addition to the standards (post, page, comment, etc.). These should also be defined in plain text instead of in the database (I'm looking at you, Drupal). Meanwhile, theming should be just as easy as with Wordpress. Anyway, it's good to see others trying to enter the blogging platform space and compete with Wordpress, but I really want to see a truly good CMS come along.

krisroadruck 13y ago
There have been a ton of CMS's written I think the problem is just adoption. Without mass adoption you don't get much in the way of ready extensibility. Thats one area wordpress really has the space on lockdown.
- rquantz 13y ago
  Are there any other CMSs that are actually better than WP but that haven't been adopted? I've seen some that are intriguing, but ultimately most seem to have the same problems, such as stored configuration in the DB.
  - akamaka 13y ago
    I've been using ProcessWire, and it's been fantastic to work with. However, it stores user-defined template schemas in a MySQL database. Does that pose a big problem for you? I'm really curious to know what kind of troubles you've run into with configuration in the DB.
    - rquantz 13y ago
      It poses a problem for deployment, collaboration, version control, etc. For instance, a new data type (not a problem in WP, but you could substitute meta fields or something) will frequently require some new code as well -- a widget, template, or whatever. Once I've built this in my dev environment, tested in the staging environment, and deployed live I will have had to set up the new data type in three different places, or written a script that does it, but most CMSs don't provide those tools, so you would be stuck hacking around with internal functions that might or might not be stable. Meanwhile, any other developers will then have to replicate the same changes in their dev environment. Version control exists to solve these problems, but when this stuff is stored in the database it is a lot harder to consistently reicate changes. I'm sure people come up with solutions that don't involve replicating configuration in the GUI, but my point is it should be baked into the CMS.
krapp 13y ago

methodin 13y ago

What happens when the blogs that inevitably grow bigger than a platform need to turn into a community and something more? Surely just a blogging platform will not suffice. How many people actually use Wordpress for just a blog, anyway? This is all reminiscent of the early blogging platforms that did one thing well but in reality most people need more than that one thing if it's something more than an area to post personal musings.

lukeschlather 13y ago
if all you need is a place to post personal musings, Jekyll is really al you need. the missing piece then is just a good WYSIWYG markdown editor.
- dkuntz2 13y ago
  Maybe. I've been using a host of static site generators for about a year now, and for the less serious blog they seem to get in the way. I'd prefer to have everything online, accessible from any computer with an internet connection. Posting quick, little thoughts is not something Jekyll or other static site generators do well. For the more serious blog, which has infrequent and longer posts, I really like the static site generator, because it lets me keep everything together and easily deal with it locally.
  - hellweaver666 13y ago
    This weekend I've been playing with Kirby. It's a static site generator powered by PHP that runs on Markdown powered text files but it also has an optional control panel for editing posts if you need that.
    - dkuntz2 13y ago
      I looked at Kirby. My problem is I don't really want to pay for it. Were I to pay, I'd probably go with Statamic, which is similar to Kirby, but looks nicer. Mostly I don't want to pay because I like the idea of open source, and having the ability to submit a fix if I find a bug appeals to me. And partially because I'm cheap.

gabemart 13y ago

O’Nolan, a former WordPress project lead himself , opines that WordPress has grown up and is no longer really about blogs anymore. It’s become a full-fledged content management system, burdened with a lot of unnecessary complexity for those that are just looking to manage a blog. WP is nothing close to a full-fledged content management system, and if it's burdened by anything, it's all the leftover cruft from the days when it was just about blogging. I use WP every day and I'm really grateful it exists. But from my perspective, the problem is not "WP is so great at content management we need to develop something just about blogging". The problem is "Lots of people have cleverly managed to hack WP into running as a general purpose CMS because there's such a wealth of support, knowledge and extensability surrounding it". I'be be much more interested in a new modern, flexible CMS built for that purpose from the ground up than I am about a new blogging software.

krapp 13y ago
What would a proper CMS have in your opinion that Wordpress lacks?
- woah 13y ago
  I've actually contemplated the idea of doing a node CMS for use on client work. Wordpress lacks nothing, it is just a badly designed architecture with an inconsistent API (for example there are 3 different functions to display a 'loop' of posts, each one has options worded slightly differently with slightly different effects) Some things that would be good: 1. Contenteditable from the frontend- for when the client just wants to change that one sentence on the third paragraph on the product page or whatever. http://createjs.org/ http://createjs.org/ seems to be a pretty good ready made solution. 2. Repeating layouts- I design and code a repeating element (like photos on the team page or whatever), and the client has an interface to add or remove units, at which point they get updated wherever they are on the site. 3. NoSQL db. SQL is good when one is balancing the books of a large corporation, or doing a survey of the heights and wattages of every streetlight in the country, but it is not a logical solution for displaying documents on the web. It would also be really nice to have a database that could be put in revision control and deployed along with the rest of the site files, as the line between content and templates on CMS sites is a very thin one. https://github.com/felixge/node-dirty https://github.com/felixge/node-dirty is intriguing, but I don't know if there are any unforeseen issues with this. 4. Blogging. Hopefully we could just integrate tightly with Ghost or something like it.

HNLogInShit 13y ago

Why does Node.js make a good platform for blog software? I thought the point of Node.js was to build systems that handle lots of atomic events efficiently. Blogging would seem like the exact opposite of that situation.

stickhandle 13y ago

In the end, who cares. I'm intrigued by Ghost. I signed up for access ... but I have also been intrigued by the many alternatives to WP out there - Octopress, Squarespace, Kirby, on and on. That's because I'm a hacker. But ... in the end WP is to this space as Excel is the spreadsheets. Its just too good. Has so much to offer. As long as we're talking about presenting html/css/js in a browser for non-dynamic sites, WP pretty much does everything. Its just lost its shiny|new status. Bloat? An easy and convenient insult. Truth is Excel has capabilities I will never use ... but it pleases me to know they are there if/when I need them. What gets lost in the argument that WP is so big, so capable that its not a blog engine anymore but rather a cms, is that it is entirely capable of powering just your blog with a whole bunch of features you won't use. But when you decide to do "X", you can pretty much guarantee you'll find a quality option/extension to handle it. Its interesting to the likes of folks on HN (and I count myself among this crowd) to find new and exciting ways to do things, but if the outcome is the same ... IOW - what is truly different. It can't just be "how", but "why" and "what".

malandrew 13y ago
My biggest complaint about Wordpress when I first had to mess around with the codebase last year is that it is an exercise in masochism. We've moved to much better tools for HTML templating in the last 10 years, yet WordPress in 2013 is stuck with the most awkward approach I've ever dealt with.
- stickhandle 13y ago
  "Most awkward"? Really? Its not nice and it definitely carries around some baggage that is a direct result of its evolutionary history, but there is always a way to get what you need. I won't defend its beauty. But i guess my questions to any WP vs. X questions would be - 1. Do you know what you need tomorrow? 2. Are you interested in getting it done or in the elegance of the solution.
  - dkuntz2 13y ago
    Why can't you get it done and have an elegant solution? WordPress kinda forces you away from elegant solutions, but other CMSs don't...

blahbl4hblah 13y ago

Microsoft wants to capture some of their dwindling browser share? This dumbass need to check the stats again...

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

Fearless_Shultz 13y ago

I'm curious how many folks have issues with WordPress from a pure user / author perspective so outside of how the code is written or a site is installed Also what are your thoughts on how responsive Automattic are to user feedback for publishers?

dkuntz2 13y ago
I've found that since WordPress switched to the current sidebar navigation over the old one (the four main headings, of which Write was first, iirc) it's a pain to write blog posts. I'm also not a fan of the large number of additional options available for posts. I'd rather have zero options, just write text and hit post. I understand why it has all of the options, but I'm partial to simpler systems that do one thing really well, as opposed to big systems (like WP) that do lots of things acceptably.

narrator 13y ago

Blogs are way too simple to reinvent every few years. Wordpress is fine. Can't we move on to something more complicated than Blogs and Crud apps?

dkuntz2 13y ago
I agree, we don't need to reinvent blogging every few years, but WordPress has moved beyond just a blogging platform, and is a full-featured CMS. Blogging is no longer the main emphasis of WordPress. Were WordPress to refocus on blogging features, instead of adding lots of other stuff, that'd be awesome.
jerf 13y ago
It's just the turn of the wheel. Should Ghost succeed, odds are quite good that in about seven years, you'll be reading about how old and crufty Ghost is, held back by it's aging Node.js platform, and how some new hotness or other is coming along to give you just blogging (or whatever). To a first approximation, every web project starts life as a "clean, simple X without all that cruft". It is the destiny of most projects to follow that with A: failure or B: becoming the next pile of sludge to inspire a "clean, simple X".
- narrator 13y ago
  This is where statically typed code bases really shine IMHO. I've seen >10 year old Java code bases that are maintainable because of all the automated re-factoring that can be done to clean up naming inconsistencies and deprecate various mistakes. With dynamic languages cruft and little mistakes just keep building up till people give up trying to maintain it and want to start over.
  - gnaritas 13y ago
    Automated refactoring came from dynamic languages. Just because the popular ones lack it doesn't mean it's not done. Smalltalk's refactoring browser works very well.

shadowOfShadow 13y ago

Why ghost? Not PHP & MySQL. Why MS + ghost? Services in Azure. Node is already there.

jmspring 13y ago

"Compared to WordPress’s bulky editor and aging PHP code base, the difference is striking." Well established product versus something that has not been around awhile. It has nothing to do with the language the code was written in, it is a product with a past versus a new product that has learned from preceding projects.

grannyg00se 13y ago

"an ease to writing that makes it pleasant to compose text formatted for the web...Compared to WordPress’s bulky editor and aging PHP code base, the difference is striking." I don't know anything about WordPress's bulky editor, but how does the code base have any relevance to front end usability?

adolph 13y ago
And when did £5,000 (maybe plus) become Microsoft throwing its weight behind something?
robryan 13y ago
Was thinking the same. I can see what they might be getting at if you compare Wordpress + mods vs clean Ghost. I doubt once considered fully featured that Ghost would be so much more efficient as to make it a key point of differentiation, for the average small blogger anyway.

thatthatis 13y ago

Great, but why can't we download it yet?

jamesgeck0 13y ago
Because they promised early beta access to Kickstarter backers. The lowest tier of rewarded backers gets access within the next week, and the codebase will be open to everyone some indeterminate short amount of time after that. I'd be surprised if it the delay was more than a month or so.
- 7schlaefer 13y ago
  That is good to hear because this one looks pretty great and I was downright annoyed when I found out it were not out yet.

ddw 13y ago

I'm really excited for Ghost for the simple reason that it's written in Node. That means if this really takes off there will be pluggable modules that can do anything that you'd like without adding to the code base. I think it would make a lot of sense if the core team doesn't add much to the initial code base and rather iterates on the UI right and works on growing the community because that is what is going to make the project take off. Really smart move by Microsoft, if for no other reason than tons of people are going to be saying "wait, whut, where do I install this?" soon and if deployment is first class to Azure at least they'll have a lot of new people in the door. Also I think there's plenty of room for evolution in blogging. There are so many places that we create content now whether it be audio, photos, video or microblogging and there isn't a widely used way of curating your online self at all of these mediums. My personal website is on Syte (https://github.com/rigoneri/syte https://github.com/rigoneri/syte) for this very reason that it displays my social network content next to my blog posts in a way that is more coherent than just a widget.

ilaksh 13y ago

I actually think that if a project like Ghost becomes really popular it is almost guaranteed to end up with a full scale plugin system and therefore become a type of operating system despite what the founder thinks about that. I think we do need something with an updated stack that has capabilities somewhat like WordPress. Here is an idea that I started on a while back. (Obviously not very pretty and needs a lot of refinement.) http://vimeo.com/43784316 http://vimeo.com/43784316

krisroadruck 13y ago

If you can believe it, this story was originally pitched to ReadWrite. They rejected it and instead ran 10 stories about the new iPhone that day. The following link is a pic of the analytics stats on this article from today. Thanks guys, over 9000 thanks to you :-) http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5511/9769041391_c52d600437_o.png http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5511/9769041391_c52d600437_o.p...

pearjuice 13y ago

Wordpress is plug and play on almost any webhost out there (some even have installers for it). Ghost is node.js which is barely supported by webhosting companies (you will most likely need a VPS or some specific node.js HaaS, at least). Will this not be a huge barrier to achieve the same traction Wordpress has?

px1999 13y ago

TL;DR: a small team at Microsoft (modern.ie) have a site old-ie compatibility scanner that they've written in node and want to integrate into a CMS. This probably isn't a larger strategy or play at Microsoft. It might be a sign of internal change among developers there, which might change their business strategy at some point in the future, but they're definitely don't seem to be "throwing their weight around" just yet. They already have far larger investments in plenty of other CMSes: * Sharepoint (the goose that lays the golden eggs), * Umbraco (which IIRC runs asp.net, iis.net, windowsazure.com, and possibly [parts of] technet and msdn), * Orchard (which is theirs, albeit through the OuterCurve foundation, which is one of MS' OSS outreaches), * MCMS (which is horribly old & expensive, but still out there and in use), * A bunch of internal CMSes, and other stuff that they developed themselves to tie in with backend systems (eg CRM) Hell, they did more with Oxite before abandoning that than they're planning with Ghost. Maybe MS as a company want to get more into node, but that doesn't really seem in line with their larger strategy (even though they definitely are starting to embrace OSS more, particularly on the web teams) - so it's probably just likely that one team wanted somewhere that they could test out the library they've written.

krisroadruck 13y ago
the plugin wasn't what got them contributor status. The $50K they paid was. Given that accounts for fully 1/4th of the total amount raised.... I'd say its not such a pittance as a plugin.
- px1999 13y ago
  Aah, I didn't see that in the article - I can find a kickstarter post referencing them as a partner, but didn't find anything talking about a 50k figure. I guess that figure does represent a significant investment (their contributions to other CMSes aside), particularly at the current early stage of Ghost's development.

scheff 13y ago

Why are we still writing in mark down? Fair enough, as a techie, it's just assumed you will learn another "language" and be productive. But a creative writer shouldn't have to think "how many #'s do I need to press? what's the shortcode for italics?" They just want to be free to create. But they also want to see their masterpiece coming to life in all it's glory. We've mastered the "Word editor" and it gives immediate feedback without reaching for a reference manual, why would we (inclusive: all writers) take a step backwards?

mfn 13y ago
One benefit is that it's portable: your text will be rendered properly with the correct formatting anywhere markdown is supported (github, forum comments, blog post, etc). It essentially frees you from having to worry about layout and visual styling, which shouldn't interfere with the writing process.
- rat87 13y ago
  There's no markdown standard (although I think some implementers were talking about it) beyond the original implementation, some implementations may not even support that I believe hacker news supports a subset. It is portable in the sense that you get(probably browser portable) simple html after running it through a probably open source markdown implementation as opposed to complex word formatting formats like odf or docx.
debacle 13y ago
> what's the shortcode for italics? If you really have qualms about remembering * ... *, I think you probably have more problems on your hands than not being free to create.

lcnmrn 13y ago

This already exists today: no need for funding, no need for self hosting, Microsoft is not involved in any way, beautiful typography, local storage for writing, nice profiles, stories ranking, a responsive design, made by a designer who writes code. An export to Jekyll feature is coming soon, so you can take the markdown documents to any other platform or just make a blog out of it. Give it a try: http://markdawn.com/ http://markdawn.com/

7schlaefer 13y ago
Excuse me, but what exactly is this supposed to be? I took about 5 minutes to figure out the UI, there are bugs with logging back in after (accidentally) logging out, and it throws what I write in some kind of global timeline thing? EDIT Not to mention the fact that I WANT to self-host!
- lcnmrn 13y ago
  It isn't ready for a "show HN". Global timeline is there for getting exposure. It looks intimidating now, but it shouldn't. Thanks for trying it! Self-hosting and updating an entire web app is not very realistic these days, but exporting in a ready to deploy site is a feature I'm thinking about. It isn't implemented yet. I don't want this to have a private mode, everything is public. You can't guarantee privacy these days. My target is more towards what Medium and Svtble are doing, than WordPress.
  - 7schlaefer 13y ago
    >Self-hosting and updating an entire web app is not very realistic these days, but exporting in a ready to deploy site is a feature I'm thinking about. It isn't implemented yet. Ah, now I get it. That would be a nice feature. >I don't want this to have a private mode, everything is public. Is there a preview functionality? If not, that would be an important feature. >You can't guarantee privacy these days That's true, but you can still give users a little privacy if you want to. I personally wouldn't want to write on that platform without a drafts/preview folder, but that might just be me.