My blog is currently running on Ghost 1.0 I’m blogging for almost 20 years, started with blogger.com I think, eventually migrated to self-hosted Ghost when it was pretty new and lightweight. I can host anything that runs on Linux, I can even use Docker.

I don’t want to migrate to the latest Ghost version because it feels very enterprisey now, needs a lot of resources on the server and uses a complex data format instead of Markdown. I don’t need monetization either.

My requirements are:

  • possible to migrate ~30-40 Markdown posts + embedded images from Ghost 1.0
  • future proof, i.e. simple data format so I don’t get locked in
  • low RAM/CPU usage
  • easy maintenance, creating posts, backups, etc
  • RSS support

I’ll be very grateful for any suggestions.

  • Azura The Spellkissed@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    51·
    10 hours ago

    I love ghost’s UI and feature set.

    What complex data format are you taking about? Last time I checked, it was plain markdown in a database (even supporting sqlite).

    What I’d recommend though, is coupling it with a static site generator and only using the ghost server for the administration / authoring (guides). That way, serving the blog to visitors is basically free in terms of resources (at last as low as it gets). You could even push these static builds to a CDN (yes yes, selfhost community, I’m just saying it for completeness)

    It might be some hassle to set this up somehow, but you could even have the container stopped unless you actively need it. You could even run the server application on your computer instead of the server, unless you want to access is from a smartphone/tablet.

    If you really want an alternative to Ghost and don’t need user management and an online WYSIWYG editor, you could go straight to an SSG and feed itraw it markdown files.

    • simon574@feddit.orgOPEnglish
      2·
      9 hours ago

      From what I’ve read, the new editor does not use Markdown by default anymore. It’s possible to create a Markdown “card” but that’s still embedded in the new format. So it’s very easy to accidentally create posts that cannot be exported as plain .md anymore.

      From the link above:

      Koenig has now been rebuilt on a new stack: React.js and Lexical — both of which are open source frameworks developed by Meta. So, Ghost is now using the same underlying technology that powers every single editor, comment box, or user input for billions of users across Facebook and Instagram.

      The static site generator is a very cool idea, I didn’t know Ghost could do that.