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.

  • artyom@piefed.socialEnglish
    41·
    20 hours ago

    I run Ghost along with a dozen other services on a N100 Mini PC without issue. All files are stored as .md. And you can disable monetization, as I have.

    My only gripe is that they implemented email authentication, which honestly infuriates me maybe more than it should.

    And also their half-assed implementation of ActivityPub.

    But can you be more specific about what you don’t like so that we can recommend a suitable alternative? Are you just looking for something as lightweight as humanly possible?

    • simon574@feddit.orgOPEnglish
      31·
      19 hours ago

      I don’t like how it’s now a very large piece of software with a lot of features I don’t need. I’ve tried never versions. The backend is now a confusing “dashboard”. I started with version v0.x, the last upgrade I did was v1.0. They are now on v6.0 which was released in August 2025. If you look at their Github releases, the latest is v6.67.0. That means it takes them less than a week to push a new version. Apparently, the project has more than a million lines of code. To me that’s crazy! I want a stable, low-maintenance thing I don’t have to constantly keep up to date.

      As it is, I cannot even re-install Ghost v1.0 anymore without headaches, they don’t support it. Apparently it has major security issues, so the only “sane” option for continuing with Ghost is doing all the upgrades.