WordPress VS Ghost

Self-hosted WordPress (wordpress.org) has pretty much no limitations, but you would have to be willing to learn something and devote some time. For me, it is interesting and not difficult, but not everyone must share such interests.

You need to buy a hosting plan somewhere else to use wordpress.org. Most of the hosting companies have 1-click WordPress installers nowadays. I assume you already have it?

and the prick that ran the wordpress.org forums BITCHED UP A STORM. I think that the exact wording was that I offered to help the guy, and the first 90 minutes were free.

any pro plugin should be supported via the developer and not wordpress.org forums. It's always being like that.

WordPress is a popular content management system (CMS) that powers over 40% of all websites on the internet. It is an open-source platform, which means that anyone can use it and modify it.

Then start with https://wordpress.org docs and tutorials.

You essentially need to delete all your files (except /wp-content/uploads and your DB) and install everything fresh from the source e.g. download wordpress from wordpress.org, and download your theme and plugins from their sources. Do not use backups or nulled software.

I wouldn't necessarily say that. People who don't have a background in building and managing web sites are not going to start off with all the technical knowledge they would need to manage a WordPress website themselves. So: if you already know enough about Linux system administration to set up a web server, then by all means do it your self with software from wordpress.org. Otherwise, the wordpress.com service is a reasonable option for beginners.

To add to what the other guy wrote: there are two ways to run WordPress software. One is to get the free Wordpress software from wordpress.org, and sign up for a hosting account from some company that offers web hosting. Then you can install the software in your account, assign your domain to point to that web hosting server, and you'll have direct control of your website.

Website: https://wordpress.org/

You know, I really think for super minimal blogs like this, Ghost is a better option. It’s faster, it’s easier, it’s built for publishers.

Ghost is another option, you can host Ghost yourself or pay for their cloud hosting platform. If you sign up for their hosting platform it doubles up as a newsletter as well but it can get quite costly if you have a lot of subscribers.

Does anyone have any recommendations? Is something like Ghost going to be what I should go with?

Some common contenders are 11ty, hugo, astro, sveltekit (in SSG mode) etc... These can usually be hosted easily with netlify or vercel. These do not come with a CMS, so you may need to use a headless cms like ghost or wordpress (possible to run headless), or manage the content directly through markdown files, or use a cms like decapcms or tina that manages the files.

Wow!! Great read!! Got it bookmarked 👍 Also, love the website! I'm hoping to get one myself - I'll have to look into ghost.org at some point.

Ghost

You can! They are focussing on their publishing platform, but it's open source https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost, see the self hosting guide https://ghost.org/docs/install/

Happy user of Ghost [0].

Open source; small but smart team. Highly recommended.

[0]: https://ghost.org/

I've used Ghost CMS in the past, but when setting up my personal blog I wanted more control over my content. Netlify CMS looked like a great way of editing markdown files stored in a git repository, but wasn't very easy to self-host (outside of Netlify).