---
title: "Ghost for blogging"
description: "If you want to stay independent as a creator claiming your online spot is crucial. With Ghost you are in a good position to build, grow and nurture this spot."
url: "https://hoeijmakers.net/ghost-blog/"
date: 2021-08-08
updated: 2026-04-25
author: "Rob Hoeijmakers"
site: "hoeijmakers.net"
language: "en"
tags: []
---

# Ghost for blogging

A couple of months ago, I set up this blog with Ghost. I found the fully hosted version a bit expensive because I was just exploring. I was in the mood for more exploration and decided to fully [host Ghost myself](https://hoeijmakers.net/self-host-ghost-blog/).

Furthermore, I rented a space at Digital Ocean and harnessed my set-up with a CDN from Cloudflare. Most probably not the shortest and easiest route, so time for a quick summary.

## Ghost publishing platform

How do I now feel about Ghost after using it for a couple of months? Am I still ravingly happy, or have there been some bumps and scratches along the way? Actually I am really content, Ghost is living up to the promise. I publish new content, shifted theme direction of the topics, renamed the domain, upgraded to version 4 and all with all it works as I hoped it would. My content is well indexed in Google, I have proper search on my site, and I am still very happy with the design.

What I also really like is the modular and open set up of Ghost. I integrated Google Analytics and will add Disqus at some point as well. As mentioned, setting op [Site Search](https://hoeijmakers.net/website-search/) was easy as well. Of course, this was all done in the English language, and I am not sure if Ghost has multilingual capabilities.

## Community

Ghost is much more than a blog. Ghost is a publishing platform that lets you build a community of subscribers. I only added the newsletter functionality recently, and now I started building the community. I have to be honest, I still need to start sending out the first newsletter. Furthermore, I am not sure if I will use Ghost or [MailChimp](https://mailchimp.com) for sending emails. Once I have decided and done that, I will update here.

It took me some time to get accustomed to Version 4 from Ghost. With this version they launched the membership part and I struggled a bit. Later it turned out that it requires email on the server to be configured, and that was not clear to me. Now that I have configured the email sending service [MailGun](https://www.mailgun.com) the community part started working as expected, and I can get creative and see how to fully use the community features.

## Self-hosting or hosted?

The self-hosting is more cumbersome if you are time constrained or rather more focussed on creating than maintaining. Self-hosting is definitely affordable, I only pay Digital Ocean for hosting, but I put a number of hours into upgrades and connections like Mailgun.

I would **not self-host**, pay for service and I would go with Ghost or with a service that offers hosting. You can for instance check out [Midnight](https://getmidnight.com), they offer such a service.

## Can you recommend using Ghost for publishing?

I have been in digital publishing for a long time, and I am a Digital Producer myself, and yes, after some months of working with the publishing platform Ghost, **I am happy to recommend Ghost**. Fun to use, powerful and versatile.

And choose a hosted version if you are serious with your publishing. I also [compared Ghost to WordPress](https://hoeijmakers.net/wordpress-vs-ghost-for-bloggers/).