From Nikola to Ghost

Nikola a great Static Site and Blog generator and the codebase is all Python which is a great plus for Pythonist, the project is very mature and includes douzen of plugins and free templates. So quite a good choice if you look at a solution for your next website!

If you don't know Nikola project you should definitely check it out. I used Nikola to create few websites: http://pybcn.org/ & http://emerzia.com/ and it has been just pure pleasure!
It comes with a bunch of great plus compare to others, it's very fast to learn, the documentation is clear as the codebase which is very easily hackable. Take few minutes and go ahead to create a simple site: http://getnikola.com/creating-a-site-not-a-blog-with-nikola.html

So why moving to Ghost?

There is 2 important quality I appreciate from Nikola:
- Static: Improve security, hosting cost highly reduced (or free) and performance. If you have used Wordpress in the past, at some stage you had security issues, either a plugins that bring some vunerability or the setup of WP wasn't perfect. - Python: When you need to do some changes into your blog engine, you definitely appreciate if the codebase is the actual language you work with. Thumbs-ups!

Nikola fitted perfectly for my needs on side creation and still does, but not for blogging, when blogging I wanted a tool on which I feel I was writing, not coding, something like Wordpress but without the issues of WP, slow, own hosting, security problem.

Here comes Ghost, simple blogging engine, write your post with 'markdown', kind of WYSIWYG feeling, let's share a screenshot:

Ghost provide hosting but all the code is fully Open Source (Github) and so you can host it yourself. Now I'm a big fan of Github Pages : http://pages.github.com/ if your site is static, it's a nice way to get free & performan hosting.

Came at the rescue Buster (Yes like in GhostBuster), this python project will allow you to scrape your local Ghost website, save it into a static directory and push it to your Github repo where you host your website :
https://pypi.python.org/pypi/buster/
Introduction to buster : http://blog.axitkhurana.com/introducing-buster/

This is quite a neat way to get the good of all sides, enjoy the nicest blogging engine, get a great hosting without worry and even be able to blog offline in train, plane, wherever you feel like writing.

So check out Ghost, it might not be the right tool for you but it will certainly inspire you!