Ghost

Ghost is an open-source publishing platform designed for independent writers, journalists, and creators who want to run their own professional publication. It solves the problem of wanting a polished blogging and newsletter platform without being locked into a commercial service — you can host it yourself and own your content, audience, and revenue entirely.

At its core, Ghost works as a headless CMS, meaning it manages all your content — articles, authors, tags, pages — through a clean admin interface, and then exposes that content via an API so it can be displayed anywhere: a themed website, a mobile app, or a third-party front-end. It handles the full publishing workflow including writing and editing posts, managing paid memberships and subscriptions, sending email newsletters to your subscriber list, and tracking audience analytics.

You would reach for Ghost if you are a solo creator or small team who wants to monetize writing through paid subscriptions (similar to Substack, but self-hosted), or if you need a professional publishing setup where you control everything. Larger publications use it as a backend content engine with a custom front-end connected via its API.

Installation is handled through a command-line tool called ghost-cli: you install the CLI via npm (Node's package manager), then run a single command to set up Ghost locally for development or on a server for production, including automatic HTTPS certificate setup. Ghost also offers a managed hosting service called Ghost Pro for those who prefer not to manage servers.

The tech stack is JavaScript and Node.js on the backend, with data stored in a MySQL or SQLite database. The frontend theming system uses Handlebars, a templating language for building HTML layouts.