Ghost VS ApostropheCMS

There is Ghost at least: https://ghost.org/ https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost

However, it has recently shifted to more limited audience. (payed subscription-based content with different tiers)

Ghost

Today, I’m excited to share something that started as a small necessity for the Goliat - Dashboard project and has grown into something I hope will benefit the entire community: the Goliat Theme, a custom theme designed for Ghost.

Ghost is the new publishing platform that was launched in 2013. Now, it is a modern, lightweight blogging platform designed specifically for publishing.

Ghost.org • Forum • Docs • Contributing • Twitter

Good point on the timing, but I really hope Wordpress users aren't migrating to Drupal en masse.

Drupal would be a very poor fit for most Wordpress-y sites (simple marketing pages, basic ecommerce, etc.). It's overkill and way too complicated and requires endless maintenance (see my rant in a sibling thread).

There are a lot of better, lighter options for people who liked the ease-of-use of Wordpress.

Wix/Squarespace are better choices for hosted/proprietary solutions, or in the FOSS/self-hosted world, there's https://ghost.org/, https://strapi.io/, https://getgrav.org/, or older PHP ones like TYPO3, Joomla, or CraftCMS.

There are also a lot of commercial headless CMSes (https://cms-comparison.io/#/card) that are good fits for devs who want to code a frontend (in a framework/language of their choice) for non-dev clients. (Disclaimer: I work for a headless CMS, but this is my own opinion). Wordpress can do headless too with the Advanced Custom Fields plugin, but that was previously bought by WPEngine and now caught in the crossfire between them and Matt :( https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/

I have a few blogs running Ghost and really like it. Plugin and theme ecosystem is nowhere near Wordpress size. However, Ghost is much easier to modify and use IMO, maybe because I'm more comfortable in javascript ecosystem than PHP.

https://ghost.org/

- to hydrate stuff

- optional: needs to have been around for 5 years

- optional: needs to still be around in 5 years

Ghost has no ACF apparently (https://forum.ghost.org/t/custom-fields-for-posts/1124/46 and (https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/issues/9020) and Astro is too custom as of now and I don't want another Gatsby (too short-lived).

It seems that people pay for Ghost, https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost

Over the years we've created lots of little open source modules that are useful on their own. Because they are not part of our core product, I don't often step back and look at them as a whole. Turns out, there's quite a collection. Tools for sanitizing HTML, tools for managing github organizations at scale, tools to improve performance, tools for localizing URLs, even a brand new tiny framework for microservices. Giving stuff away has a lot of benefits for us: it encourages quality, it encourages contributions, and of course it "gives back" for all the open source we're using to create ApostropheCMS, which is also under an open source license.

If you are not familiar with that technology, ApostropheCMS is an open-source website builder and CMS developed with modern technologies such as Vue.js and Node.js. It enables editors to effortlessly create and manage content through an intuitive UI, while developers have the ability to customize the admin UI by overriding existing Vue.js components and extending it with new menus and field types. At the same time, you keep the ability to use your technologies of choice on the front end. Learn more in the documentation.

Apostrophe's CTO, Tom Boutell, recently presented a talk at Philly Tech Week to share his experience using the OpenAI API to integrate AI into Apostrophe. If you are not familiar with this tool, Apostrophe is an open-source CMS built on modern technologies like Node.js and Vue.js that can operate as a traditional CMS, headless CMS, and website builder.

ApostropheCMS allows multiple content contributors and editors to work on documents across multiple sites. Keeping track of when changes were made to a document and who made those changes is critical. The enterprise edition of ApostropheCMS has an important new tool for managing the content pipeline. The Document Versions tool facilitates the use and management of multiple versions of a document (page).

Integrate your technology, including Express, MongoDB, npm, Vue.js, and Node.js, with flexible and native modules content APIs. In addition, Apostrophe provides a single dashboard for every operation so that you will never lack in searching for the perfect tool for your websites. You can also integrate with Jamstack to create robust custom solutions. Currently, it has 3.9k stars on GitHub.

As someone who dabbled in PHP but is mostly a self-taught JS hobbyist dev, I have been using and loving Directus (https://directus.io) since around the time they switched to Node. Development velocity is exceptional with new features released every couple of weeks and bugfixes/enhancements even more frequent, the community and core team is fantastic, and I like the fact that if I ever decide to switch to another CMS for some reason, there's no real import/export process, I just delete the directus_tables in my database, and done.

Pocketbase (https://pocketbase.io/) piqued my interest after seeing it here and on ProductHunt, but I don't think it would be the right call for a client before it hits a stable release.

I also very much enjoyed OctoberCMS (although it has its quirks), but there was a fairly acrimonious split in the community there, and OctoberCMS is no longer open source, and I haven't used the fork (WinterCMS: https://wintercms.com/)

I enjoyed using Apostrophe (https://apostrophecms.com/) for a while, but ultimately I felt like I was doing a lot of stuff in a way that didn't come naturally to me, and although Mongo seems a logical choice when you look at Apostrophe's page model, it worried me a bit that the data would not be easy to move if I ever wanted to.

Check https://apostrophecms.com/.