If there is one news which has caught the fancy of all and sundry in the world of blogging and online publishing, it is the buzz surrounding the development and the release of Ghost. Just a blogging platform, as actively touted by the developers, the final stages in the development of this platform was expedited by the Kick starter fundraising campaign, which was welcomed favorably by the online community. What does this open source publishing platform has which has got the backing of some of the most renowned names in the world of Web design and development? Find out below and also discover other little known facts about this particular platform.

The Origin of Ghost
The idea of this publishing platform was particularly conceived by John O’Nolan, the famous and adroit designer and developer, who was also the deputy head of the UI Design, WordPress from the year 2009 to 2011. In the past 10 years, WordPress has enjoyed an amazingly successful run and it is difficult for any publishing platform to replicate its success story. However, O’Nolan realized that the platform is losing the essence of the simple blog publishing which it was initially supposed to do. That, and the quest for a rather feature rich and user centric and easy to use blogging platform gave rise to Ghost.

The idea behind Ghost is to take away any complexities, improve the back-end techniques as much as possible and allow the bloggers to concentrate on their core area, which is publishing.

The New Features of the New Platform:

Given below are the few exciting new features that this platform promises to serve. Read ahead to know more:

• A JavaScript Based System:

Originally Ghost was supposed to fork off the old WordPress but soon the developers decided against that. The system makes a complete shift from WordPress in the sense that it will be based on Node.js as against the PHP of WP. This development will make Ghost amongst the first ever publishing platforms, which are totally based on JavaScript. And yet there will not be any steep learning curve, should the developers want to make the change from WordPress to Ghost.

• A User Centric Dashboard:

How many of us actually use the dashboard of WordPress or Blogger? Chances are, if we really are not that tech-savvy, we simply suffer through the various tabs of the dashboard and inevitably end up doing most of the work manually. Ghost takes care of that. It allows the users to effectively control their blog via dashboard and makes available various important information and analytical data regarding the subscriptions and traffic to the blog.

• A Markdown Editor:

The creative professionals, unless they are trained in technology too, have a certain level of aversion towards backend coding and anything remotely technical. Besides, while writing, we need to know how it appears, whatever that we have typed so far, so that we can plan ahead accordingly. Opting for the preview of the content ever so often wastes a lot of time.

Well, not with Ghost, not anymore! With its brand new Markdown editor, bloggers don’t have to opt for any manual coding, and with simple tags and use of characters, they can easily manipulate the aesthetics of the presentation of the blog.

• An Easy Mobile Access:

The platform also offers an equally easy to use and feature rich mobile app which allows the bloggers to draft and upload the content while on the go. So, the moment inspiration hits you, get your tablets or smart phones and write your way to glory.

• Simplified Search and Sharing:

Ghost does not challenge your peace of mind by compelling you to download a host of plugins to share your content and rank high on search engines. Just connect your blog with your social networking account and enjoy good rankings on search engines with this uber simple platform.

• A non-profit open source initiative:

Perhaps as a measure to avoid any future acquisition, like Yahoo acquired Tumbler recently, O’Nolan has made one of his most ambitious projects as a non-profit endeavor. The money raised by the platform would be used in further enhancing the platform. While this one attribute might not of be much utility to the end term user, they can at least be rest assured that at least the commercial entities now would not get to boss in and change the face of the original platform.

This was all we had about the new and rather hyped blog publishing platform – Ghost. Share your views about the same with us on the comments section below.

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