Future of Ghost?

Developer help
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Hey,

As a WordPress dev I find Ghost project pretty interesting, mostly because it’s written in node.js :wink: I’m just wondering if Ghost is about to stay-as-it-is blogging-only CMS, or maybe become more susceptible to modifications just like WP? I’d love to be able some day to write my own widget or plugin for Ghost :smiley:

Thanks in advance for any info,
Kacper

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While I can’t speak for the future of the platform as a whole, I can tell you the following:

  • Ghost is meant to be a publishing platform, so features are developed to meet that need. It’s not meant to be the competitor to wordpress in every single way, because wordpress does a lot. Ghost focuses on just being a simple, easy-to-use publishing platform
  • From what I’ve seen, there are plans to add extensibility to ghost (i.e. apps / plugins), but the usecase for it isn’t really clear, and the core team in the past has highlighted the importance of community feedback on what plugins / functionality are missing or desired - this is twofold - first, because (this is along the lines of what @John said in a podcast) core features (for example, SEO) should be built in - someone shouldn’t have to develop a plugin for it, and second, because it will help the team spec out the implementation
    • The new editor (Koeing) is in beta, but it’s been said there are plans to add external functionality (such as custom cards) in the future
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I also like Ghost as a platform and I think it has the potential to become a WordPress contender in the near future. It has the basic attributes of a modern CMS (IMHO), namely:

  • security (built in, but can be improved, for insance I consider backup a must have, same as seo)
  • seo (including performance through page loading speed)
  • search (albeit for now via third party services, but should be in the core)
  • social (basic share and social connections, could use better comments system)
  • mobile first (could probably use a progressive web app extension, but it’s a nice to have)
  • clean, intuitive and (not that much yet) flexible admin UI
  • code injection (tracking, measurement)
  • modular & extensible (apps hopefully in the near future)
  • custom content types (work in progress) so that publishers can create custom content
  • scalable (good performance by default, but can be improved cia external caching, multiple db servers, etc.)
  • non developer friendly overall (so that you can customize little things without the need to hack the theme, because that makes theme updates difficult)
  • ideally have a page layout builder so people can build their layouts with ease (Koenig covers this at post and basic page level, but will see how that will work with custom channels)

So Ghost scores well or shows promise in most of these areas and I think it has great potential to become a publishing focused but flexible CMS.

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100% agree with the previous responses here.

Sure, there are those who praise the vastness of the Wordpress ecosystem. I’d argue that the expansion of Wordpress into its current monolithic state exposes some tragic attributes of human nature:

  • Infinite variations of the same plugin is not good for this kind of ecosystem. Somehow our values of consumerism have bled into CMS platforms, as we shop for toys we don’t neccessarily need with company Amex cards. I recall trying 6 separate plugins to achieve a single task; after reaching out to Wordpress support, they explained the issue was actually unsolvable. There goes 700 dollars.

  • We should consider why it is we choose platforms such as Wordpress in the first place. I was introduced to wordpress dev over ten years ago when an executive touted its ease of use, even citing “the next big thing.” I have yet to see any executive who makes this choice use the CMS themselves.

  • Wordpress has proven that design by commitee is destined to fail. With endless features, I sometimes have editors call upon me to complete “difficult tasks” such as modifying the navigation bar. The platform meant to serve every purpose now serves none, as very few content creators enjoy using the tool at all, much less the full-stack devs getting pullled to format content.

Even if we ignore the blatant security issues, Wordpress has grown into a mistake. Perhaps taking the time on this forum to contemplate why a new feature adds value is enough to avoid this human phenomenon: loving something so much, that we collectively destroy it.

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Custom apps and plugins use cases

Users can write small apps like

  • to automate the social media posting or to custom platforms
  • a rewarding system for authors (something like a badge based on post count)
  • build image optimizer or something like that
  • an automated keyword linking tool for previous articles and etc…

We can keep the Ghost core as clean as we want and extend the core via custom apps. Also, you’ll be able to run an app marketplace such as the current template market.

This is just my perspective. :slight_smile:

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I Think Ghost Will Be More Popular Then WordPress If The Ghost Core Developers Are Adding Some Functionality As Like As Custom Post Type Options And Meta-Box Option.

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One thing is for sure: ghost will always better than wordpress, no matter where we go from here :slight_smile:

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