🚀 How to Build a Lightning-Fast Multilingual Local News Website with Ghost + Tips & Tools!

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Hey Ghost community! :waving_hand:

I just published a brand-new blog post that I think many of you will find super helpful — especially if you’re interested in launching a local news site that’s fast, multilingual (supporting unlimited languages via a site-wide language switcher), and user-friendly.

:link: Read the full article here

In this post, I dive deep into:

  • :white_check_mark: Why Ghost is the ideal platform for local news
  • :globe_with_meridians: How to make your site multilingual without slowing it down
  • :high_voltage: Performance tips to ensure blazing-fast load times
  • :wrench: Recommended tools, themes, and real-world setup strategies

Whether you’re a publisher, a blogger, or a local journalist looking to launch a modern news platform, this guide walks you through step-by-step how to get it done — the smart way.

Please note that I did not delve too deeply into the technical details, but if anyone needs a highly technical and detailed article, please let me know.

I’d love your feedback, and if you’ve built something similar, please share your experience!

:backhand_index_pointing_right: Check it out here: How to Create a Fast, Multilingual Local News Website

Happy building! :rocket:

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Interesting article, thanks for sharing, @thememyghost

@themeupstudio - It’s a great looking theme! If you’re going to promote it as multi-lingual (which maybe you aren’t, since that’s buried deep in your documentation), I hope you’ll include information in your documentation that it requires multiple Ghost installs. I can see someone deciding to buy it and then discovering that it’s going to cost a lot more to host than they’d anticipated. I also don’t see whether buying Crimson once allows installing it on multiple Ghost installs to make multilingual possible. Maybe I just overlooked your license page?

Speaking of cost to host – @thememyghost, your article promotes the $9 plan at Ghost Pro, but there’s no way to run Crimson on the $9 Ghost Pro Starter plan. A user on Ghost Pro would need the $25+ creator plan for each language. And then they’d need a subdomain install, which requires the Business plan at $199+/month plus an extra $50/month last time I looked.

You say that you could use a Cloudflare worker to rewrite urls (making it possible to fake a subdirectory install on Ghost Pro), and that’s true, but complicated. It isn’t as simple as sticking a reverse proxy out in front - there’s a lot of url rewriting required, and opportunities to mess it up in a bunch of ways, especially at ssl renewal time. I’d love to see someone publish worker code that made this easy to do and supported all Ghost features. Much of what’s online doesn’t look like a complete solution.

My take: Multi-language is still largely an option for self-hosted users, and fairly technical ones, since no one-click deploy is going to cause it to happen.

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Thank you.

Not only my article, but my whole website - www.thememyblog.com promotes Ghost CMS and Ghost(Pro). But you are mistaken that I only promote the $9 plan, which is absurd because as an affiliate, I will earn bare minimum if I promote the lowest plan. I just stated the price starts at $9, to get people on board with Ghost. In the article, I did not mention that the multilingual set-up will work on $9 plan. If I did, can you please let me know where, so I can rectify that.

If you see the image below, I specifically mentioned that Ghost(Pro) will be pricey and complex for this multi-lingual setup with the Crimson theme. Although I did not delve deeper into the subscription costs.

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That’s what I meant by “complex” on Ghost(Pro)

Absolutely, that’s what I would recommend for such a complex setup.

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I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to read through my lengthy article with such attention to detail.

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I think that telling someone that Ghost Pro hosting starts at $9/month in a blog post that is about using a custom theme (requires a minimum of $25) to do a multi-language setup (requires multiples of $25) is at the very least confusing.

There’s no “might eventually need” here. In your “Option A”, anyone planning to do multiple languages with the strategy you recommend will need a plan for each language, at a minimum of $25/language plus a lot of complexity, or closer to $250/language without complexity.

I agree, you do go on to say Option B (self-hosting) is what you recommend. Given the length of your article, perhaps I may be forgiven for missing it.

I think you had an opportunity here to offer really good advice, and given the lack of details in the documentation of Crimson for how to set it up, this article does add value. However, I think you’ve missed an opportunity to provide a more detailed comparison of pros and cons of the two options, allowing visitors to understand better the differences between the options.

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Thank you for your inputs. Do you think if I remove the Ghost Pro option altogether, will reduce the confusion? If so, I will remove it.

Or may be tell them about the pricing options in Ghost Pro in more detail, rather than just a couple of paragraphs?

I think you are right about the confusion, which I missed to catch. Thank you.