Anyone here successfully get a Ghost blog federated with ActivityPub?
Been researching this and sounds like it’s perhaps still in beta. I want to set up a website/blog and leaning towards installing self-hosted Ghost on a VPS. Would Ghost even be the right thing to use if I have no interest in email newsletters? (continued)
I’m no expert engineer but I’ve successfully set up NGINX, MySQL, and WordPress on an Ubuntu VPS in the past.
Ghost has official instructions for Digital Ocean and Linode, and I have an inactive Linode account, but I am considering using a different provider. But, wondering if I should just stick with Linode since it is more supported?
Found out that ActivityPub is coming to Ghost with version 6 this summer. Got a server up and running with the default install for now. Now for the fun of learning how it works.
@andrewbriscoe that's good to know. Might have to spin up a server and have a play.
@elperronegro It’s very cool software and very clean. One crazy thing I am leaning is it can be cheaper to host with Ghost directly vs a VPS. Ghost is a non-profit and their plans start at $9 per month. Includes CDN, builk email sending, and backups. Plus they of course do all the maintenance and upkeep. If you wanted the ability to send newsletters then you would need to pay Mailgun min $15 for that so I would be up to $22 for cheapest VPS, bulk email, and backups.
@elperronegro I may not want bulk email so I am working to see if Linode will open up the SMTP outbound ports to get the login and sign up flow working.
And if you were to set up a paid tier Ghost does not take a cut even when they host it. All you need to pay is standard Stripe fees. 3-5%.
@andrewbriscoe Digital Ocean and Linode are my “go to” choices and have been since I helped manage a phalanx of several hundred clients that we (deliberately) had scattered among a long list of providers. The one exception is Email Servers; Digital Ocean is not a good choice there. But you're doing that.
I used to also recommend Vultr, but they've been having reliability problems of late.
@alameth Thank you for the advice! I decided to stick with Linode for now and just set it up on the cheapest plan. I’m also not sure if I’m going to use the email newsletter part so I disabled the newsletter for now. I really haven’t paid attention but looking at the Ghost website it looks like they are now marketing it for creators of all kinds. Will try to find some explainers tomorrow. I can always migrate it elsewhere or to their own hosted service if it makes sense to do.
@andrewbriscoe Hej! Ghost's Fediverse integration is still in closed beta at the moment and opens for broader testing within the next weeks. But: beta testing is for Ghost Pro users only at the moment as they need to have a closer control over the environment during testing. Plan is to release officially for everyone with Ghost 6.0 this summer.
More details in their newsletters about the integration: https://activitypub.ghost.org/archive/
@sturmsucht Thank you Chris! I’m in the process of installing Ghost on a VPS so I will wait for the update this summer. Not in a hurry and glad it is being worked on. I also signed up for the newsletter.
@andrewbriscoe I'm really excited to get it in my hands! Good things are coming!
@andrewbriscoe I just saw a guy using write.as and it had integration here too. It looks pretty neat. And the software is available to run on your own like ghost but I imagine far less bloated with all the dependencies of JavaScript and node like Ghost has.
@seatek Thanks Mark! I’ll check that one out in the morning. Ghost is very fast even on the cheapest server but it may be more than I need, especially since I’m not sure if I want to do a newsletter.
@andrewbriscoe I’d be really curious hearing your thoughts on the comparison when you do!
@seatek Not finding many reviews about write.as but looking at the site it seems to be cheaper but also less features. Possibly less-maintained as well.
I’ve learned more about Ghost and it really seems like it will fit my needs and more. Initially, I just wanted a blog but it can also do a membership program and they don’t take a cut of that. Found out the way fediverse integration will work too.
@seatek Currently if someone signs up for a newsletter like Casey Newton’s Platformer they enter their email and receive the newsletter via email. Fediverse integration will allow you to sign up as [at]seatek[at]hard.blue and receive the blog post/newsletter on your fediverse timeline. If the blog has premium subscribers it could customize the content that gets delivered. That’s my understanding so far anyway.
@andrewbriscoe that’s really neat!! Surprisingly capable actually. But I suspect that is only if you use their hosted version yes?
@seatek The beauty is no, self-hosted Ghost has all of the same features as Ghost Pro hosted by Ghost.org. I’ve been reading and learning more about the integration all day along with fixing some issues with my deployment. But, because Ghost is a non-profit their prices are likely cheaper than what you would pay deploying it yourself. They take care of hosting, backup, paying for Mailgun (bulk email), and CDN starting at $9 per month. If I were to get bulk email running it would be $22 minimum.
@andrewbriscoe ah ok that’s what I remembered is that they required use of mailgun if you hosted yourself and wanted mailing and the CDN but I bet they might be compatible with any S3 type CDN service?
@seatek Pretty sure you can set up any CDN but haven’t looked into that yet. I think bulk email is the sticking point. I’ve only seen references to Mailgun support. One of their pages indicated CDNs are expensive. I saw that Mailgun starts at $15. These two pages have provided me a lot of info.
@andrewbriscoe S3 services at Linode are incredibly cheap. That’s what I’m using for my mastodon instance.
@seatek OK cool, that’s good to know! I’m not going to do anything until I learn more. I ended up staying on Linode. I have seen things that indicate a vast majority of Ghost users are self-hosted.
@seatek I don’t know much about CDNs but they just say to add a CDN in front of the Ghost instance so it shouldn’t matter what you do there. They say clustering and sharding are not supported at all. I don’t have one implemented yet. I just have my Linode in the Seattle data center.
@andrewbriscoe the CDN or object storage is just the big bucket that holds all your big blobby data that doesn’t change like pictures, videos, etc.
It’s often separated from the mechanics of the site than handles the logic and database which is always churning.
@seatek I may delete the server eventually and use their service. Still learning the pros and cons. Bulk email is not required but even though I don’t understand the popularity of email newsletters I think I would want that feature if I actually made a go at some sort of membership program. Apparently people do like having blogs delivered by email. I’m actually getting excited about Ghost after learning all this.
@andrewbriscoe it’s sounding really nice! The thing that put me off more than the heavy JavaScript and I believe Node.js was the price was tied to how many visitors - or did they mean how many registered subscribers instead of visitors?
@seatek Haha. I know a bit of Javascript and several other languages but I’m not a heavy programmer myself. I know a little about a lot of technical areas. Yup, the pricing is based on “members.” The $9 plan supports up to 500. These are free and paid members. I think the smart thing is to start on the cheapest plan and if you get 500 members and some of them are paying then you will have no problem upgrading your plan when needed. I know Casey Newton has been happy after leaving Substack.
@andrewbriscoe yeah just checked - the Linode object storage is only $5/mo 
and it is FAST.
My problem isn’t with JavaScript but more with Node.js. It’s an even bigger fatter beast with so many dependencies. It’s a nightmare. Mastodon uses it too and I hate it. It’s also had several horrible security issues recently.
@seatek Ahh, that makes sense. That would make it a pain if you were to do customization then. I just followed the instructions to install it. 