I’ve loved my use of Ghost over the years, and I’ve done some interesting things in the pre-1.0 version of Ghost on my site Tedium, but I admit I’ve been slow to move over to 1.0 because it would require some changes to my workflow and approach.
But I’m finally taking a stab at it after taking a second look at the app functionality. It’s certainly not a full ecosystem yet, but Ghost has some room to be strengthened if you know what you’re doing.
Anyway, this got me to thinking about Ghost as a platform, things I’d like to see and work on, and I wanted to kind of get things written down into words. Some of this might make sense as separate ideas posts, and I might do that in the next week or two, but I think that combining them together sort of highlights my headspace at the moment.
This is not super-organized, but if anyone has thoughts, I’d love to hear:
- Broaching the idea of shortcodes. As far as I’ve read in the past, shortcodes have been discouraged by the Ghost team. That’s fine—I definitely am not suggesting that it be part of the mainline Ghost product, because it’s an approach doesn’t work for everyone and clutters up the DB. But the existence of an app-based solution could be beneficial, even if it’s simply supported by the community. If that were the case, I think the solution is not to add them to the Ghost interface, but for an app framework that can parse blog posts using regex, in cases where they would come in handy—a solution posited in a blog post series I caught wind of last week. Better to code that into an app than add that into the main system, so sites that would benefit from the ability to add extra divs or styling could take advantage of it. (Side note: I know that Markdown-It allows some of this functionality through the addition of node modules, but it diverts significantly from the simplicity of shortcodes and Markdown in general, so I don’t know if that’s the right solution.)
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A different take on embeds. One fingers-crossed on my wishlist is that I’d like to see Ghost add an oEmbed-style system so that a URL for a tweet, a YouTube video, an Instagram post, or a similar social post was enough to embed it. The reason this is a better approach than simply embedding the full object is because such code can change over time—if Twitter adds new functionality for example, or if a new social network comes on the scene. This could also be done with an app built around regex, of course, among other ways. I think that this is one of WordPress’ best features (as well as Medium’s) and something that would make Ghost a lot easier to use for writers. If you have to copy and paste embed codes for a number of emails through Twitter or YouTube, that adds a lot of extra time and work, and while tools like Embedly can do this, it’d be nice to do it without an extra script that readers have to load. I’m not sure if this is the direction Koenig is going, but I’d support if if it were.— EDIT: I see this is being worked on in Koenig, so I’ll remove it. - Using apps to create new views. I know that the AMP functionality has been somewhat controversial in Ghost, but I think that its thinking could translate to other directions for the platform as a whole, if so desired. Here’s what I’m thinking: Based on a cursory glance of the AMP plugin, it would be possible to take the bones of that to build a similar routing app for a separate function. Just one example I could see is the creation of separate page, like “yoursite/permalink/email”, that would render the code for the article in an email-friendly theme, effectively (for those interested) allowing users to cut down on a lot of the busywork that comes with writing an email in the nature of Stratechery, which took the exact opposite approach to this problem, implementing a tool that effectively cleans up Ben’s code and spits out an email. (And yes, my newsletter Tedium would benefit from a tool like this as well, but I’m trying to think more broadly.) I could almost see it as something where the page would be private only for logged-in users, and the view would take the HBS theme, inline the code and add UTM codes on the fly. As far as sending, it could be a matter of giving users options—either copying and paste the code to the email, or by making it something that could be sent through the existing Ghost list. Ghost is just a blogging platform, but sometimes blog posts go directly into reader inboxes. As Ghost evolves, that could be a real opportunity to stand out while still keeping to the blogger ethos.
- Will Koenig be extendible? Finally, to get a better understanding of the new hotness, will it be possible down the line to create custom components for Koenig? That could be a real game-changer if done well—it evokes some of the functionality of Statamic or Kirby, perhaps even the keyboard magic of an editor like Gingko.
Long story short, I think that the app functionality has a lot of untapped potential, even in its still somewhat embryonic form, and I plan on working on some of this on my end. If anyone has any thoughts on this, I’d love to hear—and if you’re doing anything cool with apps, I’d love to see it.
To conclude here: I had considered, for a while, whether Ghost was the right fit of platform for my site in the long run because of recent growth and changes on my end, and I did a lot of research on this, looking at seemingly hundreds of CMSes and kicking a whole lot of tires. Ultimately, I came back to the fact that nothing else has quite the same quality of interface or long-term potential, and the community is pretty strong as well. Nothing else out there is built so specifically for writers rather than coders or marketers.
So I’m going to stick with it. Look forward to where it takes me.
Thanks for your thoughts 
Cards really can be anything, you could have a podcast player card, or a slideshow, or an image gallery card to name a few simpler ideas.
