1. 0.4 A Journey Into the Heart of the Internet's Most Interesting New Blogging Platform

2. What is Ghost? An open-source blogging platform Made with JavaScript Maintained by the non-profit Ghost Foundation Started as a WordPress mod Not spooky 3. They'll do the rest? Sounds easy! I Decided to Try It! 4. I've signed up! Now what? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?? 5. So I Click Log In... Sign up? Again? I just did that. 6. Let's Look At Templates Instead A lot of awesome free templates for something in version 0.4! (There's more if you scroll down.) 7. I Chose One Called Tepid It took me to another site to download a zip file. Then I could click the edit button next to my blog URL and upload it. 8. Still Not Sure How to Access My Actual Blog Let's Try Docs 9. Okay. 10. Now We're Cooking Ghost then explains that it's built on Node.js. You have to download both Node.js and Ghost to use your blog. Or you can use a pre-made Ghost installer which does it all at once in one quick download. I decided to go that route. 11. Thanks BitNami! 12. Setup and installation only took a couple minutes. 13. Once it's installed, this pops up. Go To Application takes you to a demo Ghost blog. Get Started takes you to the BitName Wiki page. ? ? ? ? ? ? 14. I decided to go back to that sign up page and see what happens 15. Success! My Blog Dashboard! 16. Ghost uses a unique WYSIWYG editor that allows you to input your text with formatting options on the left, and shows you what it looks like on the right. The default Welcome post explains the basics of Markdown, such as using *asterisks* for italics and **double asterisks** for bold. WYSIWYG = What You See Is What You Get 17. So the left side looks like this: 18. And the right side looks like this: 19. The Settings Page Also Allows You To: Change your email address Choose the number of posts shown per page Choose whether to show post dates 20. The End Result: 21. For My First Post, I Wrote This... 22. And Ended Up With This! 23. A free trial lasts for 30 days. After that, you have to provide your own server or you can pay Ghost to host your blog: $5/month for 1 blog 10,000 views/month (estimation) $14/month for 5 blogs 50,000 views/month $36/month for 15 blogs 150,000 views/month $80/month for 30 blogs 500,000 views/month Custom VIP packages available $ $ 24. The Ghost application itself is 100% free and Open Source you can modify and redistribute it if you wish. Anyone with coding knowledge can help contribute to the Ghost project, and each contributor will be credited. Ghost is completely customizable. 25. Review The Good: Incredibly clean publishing platform Top notch theme choices Fantastic new content editing system Non-profit, cheap hosting options Great community of coders A ton of potential 26. Review The Bad: Setup process needs to be streamlined No simple way to add About, Contact, etc. pages to blog on all themes (yet) Light gray text on white background (it's not my screenshots, it's the website) Node is new not all the kinks have been worked out yet. 27. Who Should Try It? Anyone who wants a publishing platform pure blog rather than a CMS like WordPress Anyone wanting a really clean blog that's more sophisticated than Tumblr or Blogspot but not so convoluted as WordPress Anyone looking for a cheap, simple hosting system. Coders looking for a community project they can contribute to. 28. Predictions Ghost is only going to get better Hang around and watch it become the alternative for people who don't want to deal with outside hosting companies or figure out how to use FTP but still want a sweet blog. By the end of Q2 2014, I'll be paying for one of these 29. Conclusion 30. Screenshots courtesy of the Ghost blog application and website. Thank you, Ghost! Come visit us at StevensonAdvertising.com