If you are thinking of starting a blog for your brand or just as a hobby and you don't know which platform to choose, perhaps the first thing that comes to mind is Wordpress. And this is very natural because it is the most used CMS in the world for this and other kinds of web pages.

However, there are alternatives on the market such as Ghost, little referenced in the Hispanic market but that provide such outstanding advantages that they will not go unnoticed, especially for those who know the importance of small details in SEO positioning.

Below you will discover what Ghost is and we will compare it with Wordpress, so that you can select the platform that will most benefit your online project.

What is Ghost?

Ghost is a free and open source CMS, which arises with the aim of facilitating the publication of blogs. It was created in 2013 by John O'Nolan, a former Wordpress employee, and Hannah Wolfe, who raised funding for this project through a crowdfunding campaign.

O'Nolan felt that Wordpress was too complicated and cumbersome, so he set out to create a platform that was simple, agile, and modern. It is based on Node.js, so its code is written in JavaScript and not PHP like Wordpress.

Node.js, unlike PHP, is asynchronous, so Ghost performs much better than Wordpress when multitasking is required.

It has more than 3 million installations and its creators are sold as a non-profit organization that develops technologies for journalism.

They show freedom as their main value, which is why they opted for this type of organization so as not to represent the interests of investors or shareholders.

Ghost Features

Ghost has important features that make it a notable alternative for bloggers and the media in general:

1.- Integrate memberships and subscriptions

Ghost natively includes the registration of members and the administration of periodic payments for subscriptions, so it does not require additional installations to contemplate this functionality.

2.- It has a powerful editor

Its editor is very minimalist and has integrations that facilitate many functions. However, it is not as visual as those of Wordpress.

Ghost uses a market language called markdown with which you can give a style to the articles, in addition, it allows you to insert images and use HTML for a greater personalization of the contents.

3.- Manage various types of roles and permissions

Ghost has 5 types of users, with which it is possible to classify the members of a work team so that they carry out various actions. The profiles are:

●       Collaborators:They create and edit their own articles.

●       Authors:They create, edit and publish their articles.

●       Publishers:They create, edit and publish their articles and can both edit and publish those of others.

●       Administrators:They do the same thing as editors but they can also modify site settings as well as manage users.

●       Owners:You can do the same as the administrator, but this user cannot be deleted and can also change additional elements such as billing.

4.- Variety in themes

By default, Ghost includes the Handlebars.js theme, which is very easy to use and works for most people.

However, there are other themes that can be downloaded from your marketplace allowing you to customize the website with the appearance that is most convenient.

5.- Integrations

Ghost integrates easily with a good number of applications such as Zapier, Google Analytics, Slaks, Youtube, social networks and many more.

Comparing Ghost vs. wordpress

With what has been explained so far, you will have an idea of ​​what Ghost is. Below you will find additional aspects that will definitely help you decide which of the two is better for your blog.

1.- SEO Management

Organic positioning is very important for any blog because it translates into visits. Ghost includes SEO management at its core, that is, it does not require the use of additional plugins or add-ons for this work as Wordpress does.

Ghost automatically generates the sitemap to ensure all content is indexed by search engines, plus it also generates metadata and canonical links.

2.- Load speed

Thanks to the asynchrony provided by Node.js, Ghost offers very high load performance which makes it actually much faster than the big market leader. In fact, it is estimated that it loads a page 19 times faster than Wordpress.

This considerably improves the user experience and also affects organic positioning.

3.- Native implementations

In general, Ghost requires less software to install as it includes many features natively such as: multi-language support, redirects, image bank and AMP, among others.

4.- Installation

At this point Wordpress is a clear winner, in the sense of ease, thanks to its installation wizard. Ghost requires some technical knowledge of Linux for this task, although they are not that complex either.

5.- Features

Although they sometimes slow down the performance of Wordpress sites, it is also true that there are plugins for almost anything. This provides a wide variety of functions to the web page that Ghost cannot yet imitate.

To add features in Ghost you need to include code or use its integrations.

6.- Support and community

The Wordpress community is very large, so it is possible to find support for any problem in forums, tutorials, social media groups and more.

Ghost includes a good help center, a library of guides and contact with Experts and Agencies that you can hire for your project. You can also request support via email.

7.- Hosting

This is another aspect to consider as many hosting services are not suited to support Ghost, while Wordpress hosting is very easy to find.

Conclusion

Ghost is a CMS that is presented as a solution for those who want to develop a blog even as a source of income, with good SEO performance and fully functional.

However, if you are looking for a functionality beyond a blog, a much more attractive appearance, as well as facilities to find hosting and minimal knowledge to install the site, the alternative has to be Wordpress because it is much more complete.

Also, the Wordpress community and support is more spread out across the web on various platforms. While for Ghost it is a bit more limited.

This is why the Ghost user profile is for those who have the resources to hire a professional to run certain settings or who have the technical knowledge to put the site into production.

No further technical knowledge is required for editing profiles, just adaptation to the general framework.

Thanks for your time ;-)