Ghost Blog
blog.ghost.org · Company blog · on HN since 2013
The Ghost team, makers of an open source blogging platform, write about running the company, its revenue, and lessons from building it.
What HN saysHN links it for candid company posts on revenue and the move to Singapore; commenters defend the team's focus and recommend Ghost for blogging.
63HN people shared it
20linked it in comments
57stories submitted
2.5Kstory points
7 years agolast shared
2013people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Moving to Singapore8 people · 34 points · first shared 2016 · 5 comments on HN
- 2What we've learned from building Ghost after 5 years and $3M6 people · 673 points · first shared 2018 · 173 comments on HN
- 3How we Spent the Kickstarter Money, where we are now, and what’s next for Ghost4 people · 39 points · first shared 2015 · 7 comments on HN
- 4Ghost: $411k Annual Revenue with a team of 63 people · 251 points · first shared 2015 · 163 comments on HN
- 5Ghost 0.3 (Kerouac) Launches3 people · 68 points · first shared 2013 · 52 comments on HN
- 6Where our favourite swear words came from3 people · 20 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 7Ghosts turns 3 years old3 people · 9 points · first shared 2016 · 1 comments on HN
- 8Lessons Learned Building an Open Source Product from $0 – $350,000/year in 12 Mo3 people · 9 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 9Ghost August update: $500k annual revenue, doubled cashflow, new UI on the way3 people · 6 points · first shared 2015 · 1 comments on HN
- 10Ghost Launches to The Public2 people · 475 points · first shared 2013 · 261 comments on HN
- 11Ghost Acquires Roon.io2 people · 48 points · first shared 2014 · 5 comments on HN
- 12Ghost Desktop2 people · 5 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 13Ghost 0.3.1 Maintenance Release2 people · 3 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 14Introducing Ghost(Pro)2 people · 1 points · first shared 2014 · discussion on HN
- 15Homepage2 people · first shared 2013
What HN people wrote when they linked it
scrollaway · 2018-03-23
If anyone out there either is able to self-host their blog, or can afford a few bucks a month for it, I recommend Ghost (https://ghost.org). Example blog:
https://blog.ghost.org
Open source customizable markdown blog engine, with great themes by default. I feel like it doesn't get enough attention.
wtfstatists · 2018-01-20
There’s a pretty great post from the Ghost founder about it (on mobile so can’t look it up easily).
https://blog.ghost.org/moving-to-singapore/
napoleoncomplex · 2015-08-27
Agreed, they're sticking to their core strength, and I feel are executing their vision quite well. It's depressing to see snide comments about both the company and the amount of money they're making.
Some people have a completely unrealistic view of how much money is needed to run a company outside of SV/how much money is needed to live more or less worry free. Considering the revenue, and living outside of bubbly salary areas (John O'Nolan lives in Egypt for example), they're all living a comfortable life on their current paychecks, and as the revenue continues to grow, it's only going to get better. They aren't beholden to anyone, run a successful open source business and are growing nicely every month. If that's not a great story, I don't know what is.
As a reality check for SV folk, according to their report on how they spent their Kickstarter money (http://blog.ghost.org/year-2/), their gross starting salaries were 4500 $ per person (18k for 4 people). Warm word of advice, spend time in other cultures :).
harishchouhan · 2013-11-01
http://blog.ghost.org is the official blog.
teleclimber · 2019-04-20
I'm just suggesting that a service that touches email would benefit from being easier to trust. I never said he should commit to never making money or anything close to that. Like you literally invented that.
In fact I suggested he look into the open source + hosted business model. Ghost seems to be doing alright with it:
https://blog.ghost.org/5/
> It seems like it would be easier for you to just not evaluate new mail clients.
There are plenty of OSS mail clients. I was just looking at RoundCube the other day. It's actually pretty slick as far as traditional email clients go.
https://roundcube.net/
Vinnl · 2018-08-21
It's a joke, the context of which is that they removed Postgres support from Ghost a while ago, and people keep complaining about it.
See: https://blog.ghost.org/dropping-support-for-postgresql/
kevinconaway · 2018-05-17
> We should be praising the companies that take the time (or implement the automated process) to send the rejection letters and not leave us hanging.
Its interesting that there is an article on the front page [0] right now singing the praises of Ghost (ironically named in this case) which does exactly the opposite.
From their careers page [1]:
> Unfortunately due to the volume of submissions that come in whenever we open a position we aren't able to respond to every single application, but if yours is successful - you'll hear back from us within around a week.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17082228
[1] https://blog.ghost.org/infrastructure-engineer/
icebraining · 2018-05-17
Seems like they haven't updated that page, since https://blog.ghost.org/year-3/ mentions 9. Or maybe the ninth person wants to remain... a ghost (ba dum tsh!)
j16sdiz · 2018-05-16
... 501c3 ..
They are a Singapore non-profit.
https://blog.ghost.org/moving-to-singapore/
app4soft · 2018-04-22
> I would like to continue using the service, but I have no interest in maintaining my account.
Just do "logout"
> Why is account deletion not an option?
Because, each submission & comments posted by you should be stored for historic reason - somebody already bookmark or quote it.
Think, HN has something like "Hemingway Mode"[0], there also related XKCD[1].
[0] https://blog.ghost.org/hemingway-mode/
[1] https://xkcd.com/1540/
rocktronica · 2017-07-27
Looks like a "paint" font on top of a filtered stock photo
https://blog.ghost.org/content/images/2017/07/DJI_0006-Edit.jpg
wprapido · 2016-08-18
https://blog.ghost.org/moving-to-singapore/ one of ways how to solve it
i'm invoicing EU customers / clients using my US or new zealand company, while i use my UK company for UK only
hackerboos · 2016-04-26
It baffles me that media-tech companies such as Ghost want to relocate there: https://blog.ghost.org/moving-to-singapore/
ValentineC · 2016-03-25
If you're looking to do business outside the EU as well (and not have to handle VAT-MOSS), you might want to read the Ghost blog on why they decided to move their foundation from UK to Singapore:
https://blog.ghost.org/moving-to-singapore/
(The HN discussion of the above link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11103274)
mintplant · 2015-08-27
This is from April 2015. Latest figures are here:
http://blog.ghost.org/august-2015-update/
swirlycheetah · 2015-01-29
Ghost is probably a good example to investigate.
Their software is open sourced and easy for anyone with a server and some technical knowledge to get up and running. They offer a paid for hosted product which is reasonably priced and offers automated updates.
Here's[0] a report on their progress in 2014, as you can see their model is working very well for their product.
[0] http://blog.ghost.org/2014-report/
coffeecheque · 2014-04-30
I think it is, worryingly for early backers.
http://blog.ghost.org/introducing-ghostpro/
brickmort · 2013-10-20
Awesome! It's really cool to see a static generator for Ghost being released so soon after the public release of Ghost - http://blog.ghost.org/public-launch/
Kudos!
joshthewanderer · 2013-10-07
According to the features page:
"You can host it on your laptop, or you can host it on a public server. The code is open, and so is the MIT license."
It's currently not public, so I would imagine at the moment it's all hosted on their servers, but according to their blog[0], they're going public on the 14th of October, meaning it should be self-hostable from then, one would assume.
[0] http://blog.ghost.org/ghost-0-3-1-maintenance-release/
johnonolan · 2018-08-21
Heyo, John from Ghost here. Thanks for the kind words so far about 2.0 — it’s been a hectic few months! Earlier this year I talked about how we were shifting focus from simplicity to power - https://blog.ghost.org/5/ - and this is the first big release since that move. Whereas early versions were extremely opinionated and rigid, we’re now starting to bake in more flexibility and configurability to allow for a more diverse set of use-cases.
Some fun technical details from this release:
- New features require building a routing map for all possible URLs on boot, which is a dramatically heavy operation. We were eventually forced to forgo our traditional ORM layer entirely to get any degree of performance (insert: shock/awe)
- Related: It turns out SQLite3 has a query limit of 999 SQL variables, so we had to implement a recursive query strategy for SQLite only. Wild. Default is MySQL though, which was fine.
- Conquered a pretty spectacular memory leak when running in development as a result of trace-logging promises in Bluebird, which is “a full featured promise library with unmatched performance” — …unless you implicitly enable debug traces
Also: Let me be the first to say that I can’t believe there’s still no Postgres support, which is absolutely outrageous.
On a serious note, thanks for all the support and there are several of us hanging out in the comments if anyone has technical questions which they’re curious about.