# Thoughts, stories and ideas: Saying goodbye to Ghost

*2022-04-08*

> Tumblr taught me HTML and CSS; Ghost taught me servers, CLI and deployment. After years on the platform, why I moved this site off it and what I lost.

https://adamstoner.com/ghost/

[Tumblr](https://tumblr.com) taught me HTML and CSS. [Ghost](https://ghost.org) taught me so much more. 

I've been using Ghost since pre-V1. It's an amazing, open-source Content Management System that taught me oodles about not just the languages it's written in but also CLI, server management, and how to deploy things online. 

After several months of running Ghost solo on [DigitalOcean](https://digitalocean.com), I moved to [Ghost(Pro)](https://ghost.org/pro) where team that makes Ghost runs your Ghost site for you; they handle SSL, CDN, they'll deal with upgrades, and, as the product developed, they also dealt with the introduction of newsletters, payment gateways, and more.

I've watched Ghost grow over the past five years (they're now on V4.4) but a few days ago, I said goodbye. 

I downloaded my self-coded theme and re-wrote the entire thing in [Liquid](https://shopify.github.io/liquid/) and am now using [Jekyll](https://jekyllrb.com).

I still love Ghost and I'll continue to sing its praises long into the future but there are two key reasons I departed... 

**It's cheaper.**

I use [Cloudflare Pages](https://pages.cloudflare.com) to host this website. It's free!

**It's simpler.** 

Jekyll is so easy.

I write posts in Markdown in any text editor ([I like Nova](https://nova.app)), commit changes to a private Github repository, and [Cloudflare Pages](https://pages.cloudflare.com) builds the thing automatically. 

Ghost is slowly departing from a simple blogging platform to a fully-fledged creator studio complete with memberships, newsletters, and other community tools. I admire that goal and I think Ghost is going to have a very successful future; it could radically shake-up the way that creators make money online by separating them from platforms like Patreon and Substack. 

But it's not what _I'm_ looking for. I don't need those things...  

When you make a new Ghost blog, the description of your site is autofilled: Thoughts, stories and ideas.

In binning Ghost, I hope to get back to what blogging is to me: diary entries on the internet. Sure, there will be accompanying audio narration (I am an audio producer after-all) but I'm not looking to be an influencer. 

I'm just me. 

And these are just my thoughts, stories, and ideas.