Why I'm Switching From Wordpress to Ghost
It feels like I went through a bad breakup..I spent over a year writing and creating content on Wordpress only to get wrecked by the overly complex and technical backend when I needed to make infrastructure changes.
Admittedly, it was probably partly my fault for buying a domain name from one website, hosting with a different website, building on Wordpress, and distributing with another software. There were just too many places for things to fall a part.
I spent hours trying to fix the website, poking around in the cPanel while on calls with Wordpress. Eventually, I said it wasn't worth it, saved my previous blog content in a Google Doc, and shut it all down.
Oh well, I thought. We're going to Vietnam and blogging was fun while it lasted.
When we got back from our 4 week trip, I was itching to write, share ideas, and create new content. This time however, with the right infrastructure, inspired by Ali's video below with over a million views.
In the video, Ali starts with a list of why everyone should have a website. He says a website,
- Helps you develop your own ideas
- Helps your professional life
- Leads to connections
- Can expose yourself to interesting opportunities
- Can greatly increase your impact
- Can be monetized if you want
Then he jumps into 3 options for where you can build your site.
The first option he recommends is Substack:
Which is a free, email newsletter type of website. The downside is that you don't really have your own domain, but it's a great free and easy option to get started.
Then he recommends two paid options:
- Squarespace - Ali recommends Squarespace "if you're a total computer noob" because it's easy and around $13 a month
- Ghost - is what Ali uses for his website and is recommended "for those who know a little bit about computers"
My Experience with Ghost So Far
Prior to this video, I had never even heard of Ghost.
But I've had a great first impression of it.
The UI is minimal, sleek, and modern.
The best analogy I can think of is that Ghost feels like Google's homepage, whereas Wordpress felt more like Yahoo's.
Speaking of Google, to kick this website off I purchased www.itsjohnpham.com from Google Domains for $12 and linked it to Ghost. And boom. Off to the races.
With Ghost, I feel that I can just focus on creating and less time on finagling.
The Functionality I'm Most Excited For
When I used to post a blog with WP, I would have to copy the url of the new post and use a different vendor like ConvertKit or Mailchimp to email it to subscribers.
With Ghost, as soon as I hit publish, I can email it friends and family who are already subscribed. All 2 of them right now. Plz sub? :)
It's the little things like this that make blogging that much more enjoyable.
Anyways, big s/o to Ali Abdaal for pointing me in the right direction. His content and productivity is on another level.
I hope you're staying healthy and following your curiosity. I'll try to do the same and share on here as well.
Be in touch soon!
JP