Choosing Ghost

A lot of people blog via Wordpress. A lot of people are wrong. Here's why I chose Ghost.org instead:

1. Markdown

If you're not familiar with it, go get familiar with it here and here.

Markdown (and it's screenplay variation, Fountain), are the future of manuscripts. It's already the present in technical writing and software world, and it's just a matter of time before this spreads to the rest of the writing world.

Ghost loves Markdown, which makes me happy.

2. Setup

Wordpress is famous for it's 5-minute setup, or whatever. Ghost setup took less than five minutes. The default theme is gorgeous, and the defaults settings all make a lot of sense.

3. Performance

Ghost is snappy. No, it's fast. Seriously fast. It kicks Wordpress' ass in this regard.

Oh, and I can really use it's admin interface on my phone. That's a killer feature if ever there was one.

4. Design

Sort of a synthesis of the previous two. I'm a software guy, and Ghost is a brilliantly designed web application. It inspires me to build better UI.

5. Javascript > PHP

Wordpress is a product of PHP world. Ghost is a product of Javascript / NodeJS land. There was a day, long ago, when PHP and JS were both sort of hacker dominated languages. No longer. JS-Land is home to the best front-end web developers, and really a lot of the best all-around developers these days. That's a BFD.

6. Uniqueness

Wordpress claims to power 26% of the Internet. Well, good for them. I think it's nice to be a little different. Sort of like using Keynote instead of PowerPoint. When people see your stuff, they can tell, it looks a little more unique, "not just a Wordpress site." I think that's valuable.

Of course, all of this is just my opinion. But if that's not what you wanted to hear, you've found the wrong URL by mistake. May I suggest another?