You're invited... a set of tools for Ghost (Apple News, Advanced Search, Editorial Calendar, and more!)

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Hey folks! I’m on a building binge, collecting together several years of individual client projects into more general tools that I hope you’ll find useful for your sites.

Everything is at the alpha/beta stage, so I hope you’ll kick the tires and try things out, and I especially hope you’ll click the ‘feedback’ button and tell me where I’ve done well or not so well.

This is eventually a mix of paid and free products, but nothing is currently payment-gated, and I’m aiming to more run a community service than a lucrative SaaS. (Although yes, I’d like to cover costs and my time, eventually.)

Highlights:

  • Newsletter digest builder
  • Embeddable events calendar
  • Member labels (geolocation available, more to come)
  • Staff creator (no more email invites)
  • A TOC and sharing links that work in email
  • Algolia-based advanced search
  • Itty bitty ad server
  • Editorial calendar and post planning
  • Popup builder
  • Fundraising “thermometer”
  • … and probably some other things I forgot. :)

Here’s the URL:

Your email is used only to save your settings, never shared, sold, or spammed.

Feel free to set up a site but not put in an api key while you poke around.

Better docs are definitely on the to-do list!

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Awesome job … well-impressed! :clap:

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Just here to recommend @Cathy_Sarisky for pretty much any tech needs you might have for your site – she’s delightful, fairly priced, does fantastic work and has improved my situation many times over.

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Awww :heart: Thanks @LifeIsASacredText !

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Just added: An Apple News integration!!!

Never again will I wish for more cards in Ghost. Translating them all to apple news format was a major lift!

Oh, and ads. If you’ve ever wanted an itty bitty ad server to serve your own ads (that you originate) in Ghost, complete with (modest) analytics, I’ve got you covered.

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I tried to get set up with Apple News, and was told they were not accepting any more publishers. Does your tool get around that somehow?

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Got to agree. @Cathy_Sarisky is my always go-to whenever I need something Ghost-related. She’s the best!

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Alas no. I built it primarily for someone who has an Apple News invite already (obtained through an INN connection, and apparently it took 10 months to get!)

INN appears to be telling their members to apply via an Apple form https://inn.org/resources/content-distribution-and-licensing/ – here’s a direct link to that form:

You might decide it’s a reasonable time investment to submit the form, to see if it gets any action. Maybe, like my client, you’ll get a nice surprise 10 months later! Maybe not.

I’ve got an email out to a contact at Apple News, and will update if I learn anything useful :)

Update: fixed the link INN is sharing.

Update #2: I tried with a different icloud account and can’t see the news publisher features, so apparently something needs to be enabled there, too…

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I mentioned this on Reddit, but it is worth repeating here. As the owner of Technodabbler, I wanted to personally vouch for these tools. I have been using them heavily over the last two months and have been impressed with how useful they are.

I had actually started building something similar to the Editorial Calendar, but after trying Cathy’s version, I stopped and switched to it instead. The Popup Builder and Search tools have also been useful additions to my workflow.

I am a happy paying user, and I am glad to support the work SpectralWebservices is doing.

Alex

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