Ghost: Best Blogging Platform| How To Install Ghost On Windows

Do you love to write? What is your ultimate goal when you begin writing? The biggest question is which platform you use to share your penned thoughts?

You know what, ultimately, writing is something you can't fake. Right?

And most importantly, your precious words need a brilliant platform so that every developer, designer, or writer out there grasp the purpose of your writing.

This article is going to show your words the right paradise to stay or a platform where you can share anything without any predicament. Let’s talk about Ghost now.  

An Overview Of Ghost

Ghost is an open-source blogging platform that simply helps to share blogs over the millions of amusing and latest topics. Simply, that relies on a crisp and minimal user interface. In other words, the ghost is made for bloggers or writers.

The main purpose for the Ghost Best blogging platform was first composed about at the start of November 2012, in a blog post by project founder John O'Nolan, the former deputy lead for the WordPress User Interface team, after becoming discouraged with the complexity of using WordPress as a blog rather than a content management system.  

The ‘Ghost’ is a success with a thriving open-source community profit for many businesses. Companies like digital-ocean and others using ghost to host their blogs.

Blogging & Personal Websites are a colossal part of the internet. And many people and companies use Ghost for hosting blogs. The goal behind creating a ghost blogging platform was simple, lean, and modern. Something with all the great parts of WordPress without being over-bloated. Instead, if we talk about the best description of Ghost it comes from O'Nolan's own powerful words, he stated that "it's just a blogging website". Now, let’s understand Ghost for beginners and the process of how to install Ghost in the below section.

How To Install Ghost On Windows?

1. Initially, you need to update your OS by going to control panel > System and Security > Windows Update > Check for updates.
2. After the up-gradation process, Go to http://nodejs.org/download/ then click on the Windows installer to proceed further to download the .msi installer.
3. Now go to http://ghost.org, login, and click the blue Download Ghost Source pre button.
4. In the location of your choice, create a folder called Ghost and expand the contents of the ghost.zip into it.
5. Now open the Node.js Command Prompt, which can be found in your Start menu. There is a Node.js app and a Node.js Command Prompt. Make sure you open the Command Prompt.
6. Now you need to change directories to the Ghost folder you created:

cd [ path to where you have created the Ghost folder ]

7.   Now install Ghost

npm install --production 

Ghost Welcomes You!

Ghost Features

The ghost holds a myriad of features in its Feature Index. We are going to explain some of the foremost in the following list.

1.Custom Branding: With the unstoppable support of custom branding, it takes control of your site's branding entirely. And most importantly they never put the Ghost logo anywhere on the site.

2. Posts: It's another foremost feature of Ghost and considered as the primary data type within ghost posts. It simply helps to build simple or complex collections of the regularly published content.

3. Multi-language: This striking feature allows you to publish content in any language, rather than a feed of posts or pages allow for easy creation of many things like contact pages.

4. Code Injection: You can add simply the custom code to your own site's header/ footer, per page, or site-wide, specifically in the requirement of different scripts with extra styles.

5. Fullscreen Editing: In this feature, you will never face any distraction, any clusters, as this is just a platform for publishing data content. The editor of the ghost gets out of your way and lets you focus on what you do best.

6. Markdown Support: The Ghost editor has Markdown in its DNA, with automatic autocompletion of Markdown syntax as you type.

7. Embed Cards: You can easily add automatic embed from Twitter, YouTube, SoundCloud, Spotify, Instagram, CodePen, Vimeo, Flickr, and many more.

8. Custom URLs: It generates short readable URLs by default, and also allows you to override and configure them however you like.

Note: Giphy was taken from Google

Roles & Permissions

You can easily set up your site with sensible user roles and permissions built-in from the start.

• Contributors: Can log in and write posts, but cannot publish.
• Authors: Can create and publish new posts and tags.
• Editors: Can invite, manage, and edit authors and contributors.
• Administrators: Have full permissions to edit all data and settings.
• Owner: An admin who cannot be deleted + has access to billing details.

Custom Themes

Ghost ships with a simple Handlebars.js front-end theme layer which is very straightforward to work with and surprisingly powerful. Many people stick with the default theme (live demo/source code), which provides a clean magazine design - but this can be modified or entirely replaced.

The Ghost Theme Marketplace provides a selection of pre-made third-party themes that can be installed with ease. Of course, you can also build your own Handlebars Theme or use a different front-end altogether.

Self-hosting or Managed?

In the Ghost Blogging Platform, there are foremost three ways to host a Ghost Website. Now we are going to provide you some of its hosting packages.

1. Self- Hosting using:

• Digital Ocean
• Blue Host
• Microsoft Azure
• Amazon Web Services (AWS)
  

2. Managed Hosting Using:

• Ghost Pro, by using the creators of Ghost
• Fast Comet
• A2 Hosting
• Runkite  
  

3. Self- Hosting Using YOUR Server & OUR Service!  

Pros & Cons of using Managed Hosting

Managed hosting is an IT provisioning design in which a service provider charters distributed servers and associated hardware to a private customer and manages those operations on the customer's side. Ghost is one of them that holds the many pros and cons through a publisher can publish or host their content without any doubt. We are providing you some of them in the below section.

Pros of Using Managed Hosting

• Peace of mind
• Managed by experts
• Provides Trial availability usually for (2 weeks) without credit card
• SSL may be enabled by default
• Backups, Patches, and other server tasks are undertaken by the experts.
• Moreover, if something goes wrong they lose sleep and it saves you a lot of time and energy in the long run.

Cons of Using Managed Hosting

• You will have to depend on the support team for your issues.
• Limited control and no SSH access.
• You don't learn anything about the Ghost barebones. The hacker in you might remain dissatisfied with not being able to tinker around.
• Every provider has his own limitations and you need to tread carefully.

Signing Off

Hopefully, you are able to decide whether Ghost is a suitable blogging platform for you after playing around with it. Try out this interesting platform.

Good Luck!