The last time this blog got a facelift was about five years ago. Phew! I had moved from the infamous Blogger to the famous WordPress. It was a relief moving away from Blogger.
Despite the move to WordPress, I was also interested in Ghost. I have been in love with Ghost since its inception. One of the reasons for this affinity is its first-class support for markdown and satisfying default themes (remember the first version of Casper).
For a long time now, as a hobby, I have been experimenting with Ghost in all sorts of ways - local machine, docker, Raspberry Pi, Ghost Pro trial (when it was not exorbitant $29 and even after). As much as it was a hobby, I have also been lazy moving to Ghost. The primary reason is self-hosting because I have to sell one of my kidneys for their Pro version. I consider their $9 plan a namesake.
Why am I moving my blog to Ghost after all this time?
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WordPress does not appeal to me for hosting blogs, especially programming.
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Their markdown support has gotten weird over time. It annoys me when posts written in Markdown get converted to HTML. I have encountered it more than a few times.
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I find only their Twenty Fifteen as the only sane free theme. Other free and paid do not fit my taste and needs, not without sufficient customization.
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The free version of WordPress has only primitive support for customization and no support for plugins, which is limiting. The paid version did not appeal to me just for plugins.
After long deliberation, I convinced myself that it is worthwhile to bear a little pain in self-hosting to enjoy the customizations I need.
So, here we are! In Ghostland in the Attila costume. Bye-bye WordPress.
- I will eventually discontinue posting on WordPress. I have no immediate plans to move Lights Preserved.
- I know my frequency of writing has gone down a lot. Call it writer’s block. Or laziness. Or not learned anything new. I hope it is just a phase and will pass.
