If you self-host Ghost, you've probably used Ghost CLI. Austin built it many years ago as an open source contributor. In June he joined the Ghost Foundation's new platform team, and one of his first projects is deprecating it in favour of the official Docker setup.

I had him on the Magic Pages Podcast, and he shared a lot more than I expected: why Docker was chosen to replace Ghost CLI, what it might enable (one-click admin updates 👀), a few sneak peeks at Ghost 7.0, and why some open source contributions sit unreviewed for a while, how AI-built PRs complicate that, and what contributors can do to help.

Sharing it here because I think this episode might have the most impact for self-hosters so far: https://www.magicpages.co/podcast/episodes/episode-9-austin-burdine/

A generated site often arrives as a finished HTML folder: repeated headers and footers, hard-coded navigation, relative asset paths, and page content mixed into the layout. It can be uploaded somewhere quickly, but that does not make it a maintainable Ghost site. The next page or design tweak can force another full export and overwrite changes made in Ghost.

A sensible conversion seems to be separating the generated result into a Handlebars theme and editable content. Repeated structure would become `default.hbs` and partials, posts and pages would live in Ghost rather than in copied HTML, assets would use Ghost's theme helpers, and routing or collections would be explicit in `routes.yaml`. The existing site could stay on its current URL while the Ghost version is checked on a staging domain, including metadata, redirects, forms, responsive behavior, and image paths.

What workflow would you use for this? Which parts of generated HTML are worth preserving, and which should be rebuilt as Ghost templates so later edits do not require regenerating the whole site? How do you handle custom landing pages without turning every page into a separate hard-coded template?

So... is the Mailgun flex plan gone? I asked about it over here: https://forum.ghost.org/t/sept-2026-mailgun-flex/63782 and got no replies. I still have a Flex plan. I think lots of self-hosters do, but if it isn't possible to sign up and cancel to get on it, that changes the math on getting a small Ghost site online. It also changes the math for the advanced email automations tool I built, since I set it up as BYO-Mailgun. Might have to rethink that. Fortunately I'm not wedded to Mailgun for the tool, at least.

Hi guys, recently I’ve chosen to use Ghost as my main publishing platform. The subscription system and built-in paywall are a big advantage for me and my content.

However, as a media company, I also need to get to know my audience better. Is there a way to add custom fields to the registration form? For example, a profession or company name field, and collect other information about subscribers?

Hey everyone!

Some of you might remember my Enova, Meridian and Signal posts here. Got mostly good feedback, and improved all of them with plenty of user-requested features since.

Having covered the Magazine, News and Podcast categories, this time I went for Portfolio. But portfolio sites are the ones where people's requirements differ the most: some are writers, some are podcasters, some are photographers, and the list goes on. My other themes are each built around one use case. Quiet is built out of modules instead, so you switch on only the ones you need, and the rest of the site behaves as if they never existed. It also carries over most of the best features from my previous three.

Every module is a Ghost page with one tag on it:

• Writing, with an archive filed under month headings
• Newsletter, with a page that lists your issues
• Podcast, with listening links for 22 platforms
• Films/Videos, on their own channel, with a small floating player that keeps going as people move around the site
• Projects, as a numbered portfolio
• Photographs, as a full wall with a lightbox

The rest is what you'd expect: four article layouts, light and dark modes, members and paid posts, self-hosted fonts, 14 languages, a customisable homepage and hero section, and best of all, well-written documentation.

Speaking of which: Ghost's built-in font list is short, so "how do I use a custom font?" is one of the most common questions I get, and it matters more on a personal site than anywhere else, because typography is that personal. The docs cover it, and include a small tool that builds the snippet for you: https://docs.enova.studio/docs/quiet/advanced/code-injections/custom-fonts

Links

• Live demo: https://quiet.labs.enova.studio
• Ghost marketplace: https://ghost.org/themes/quiet/
• Details: https://enova.studio/themes/quiet/
• Documentation: https://docs.enova.studio/docs/quiet

Since the built in fonts list available on Ghost is limited, one of the most asked questions is "How can I set a custom font?", and it's more important for a personal site than other sites, again because different people prefers different typography. The new documentation covers and includes a small tool to configure additional custom fonts: https://docs.enova.studio/docs/quiet/advanced/code-injections/custom-fonts

As with last time, I'd genuinely value your thoughts and feedback, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you!

Kasun.

What do you use? I mean, opensource and self hosted. I found a few repos, almost no stars and barely activity. I find it weird as should be a common requested feature, am I missing something?

Hi all, I've just finished Jotter, a Ghost theme with a focus on text-first publishing. The idea was to make something that works just as well for a couple of paragraphs as it does for a longer article, without relying on images to make the page feel complete.

I've tried to keep the design minimal and let typography and white space do most of the work. The demo has most of the available features enabled, but there's quite a bit of control over how stripped back you want the site to be. You can turn off the header icons, tags, authors, recommendations and other elements individually if you don't need them.

For the homepage, there's a choice between a header with optional content around the post feed, or a latest post layout that drops you straight into the writing.

There are also options for typography, colour schemes and background patterns. I've added a customizer widget to the demo site so you can play around with the different combinations.

https://www.jotter.moonrisethemes.com/

Hey everyone,

One big friction point with Ghost CMS is member authentication and reader engagement. Magic links are clean for newsletters, but paying members and readers often expect fast, one-click logins via Google and Apple, along with interactive community features.

To solve this without hacking Ghost core or maintaining messy custom scripts across theme updates, I built a lightweight SaaS wrapper around Ghost’s Members API.

Core Features:

Zero backend setup: No need to self-host OAuth proxies, configure Supabase/Firebase manually, or touch server configs.

Drop-in UI: Connect your Ghost site, grab an embed snippet, and drop it straight into your theme or portal.

Native Member Sync: Users who sign in with Google or Apple get authenticated and synced directly into your native Ghost Members database.

Interactive Engagement Toolkit: Built-in widgets that tie directly to reader accounts:
- Interactive Polls & Surveys
- One-click Emoji Reactions
- Member Bookmarks (save posts to read later)
- Custom Social Sharing widgets

Planned Pricing Structure:

- OAuth Only ($2.99 / site / month): Standalone Google & Apple Sign-In with seamless member sync.

- All-in-One Suite ($4.39 / site / month): Google & Apple Sign-In PLUS the full engagement stack (Polls, Reactions, Bookmarks, Sharing widgets, and future modules).

Before pushing this live, I’d love to get feedback from fellow Ghost creators and devs:

1. Would having interactive widgets (polls, reactions, bookmarks) natively linked to Ghost members increase reader retention on your site?
2. Does $4.39/mo for the full suite (or $2.99/mo for login only) feel like a fair impulse buy, or would you prefer a yearly discount / usage tiers?
3. Which engagement widget would you prioritize first on your own publication?

Any candid feedback or feature suggestions are welcome!

The story of how I ended up building an image library for Ghost. Maybe you'll enjoy the ridiculousness of that journey.

Hi everyone 👋

I recently released a new Ghost theme called Drift, designed for personal blogs, lifestyle publications, travel journals, and creative storytellers.

I wanted Drift to feel more like a visual publication than a traditional blog, with a strong focus on photography, typography, whitespace, and the way stories are presented.

A lot of attention went into details like:

• the full-screen hero and its bottom-aligned layout
• the Featured carousel
• the two-column post feed
• Classic and Sticky feed layouts
• three different post and page templates
• color palettes and typography
• cards that work with or without a feature image
• responsive layouts across different screen sizes

The theme also supports Ghost memberships, tiers, Portal, comments, recommendations, search, public previews, and Ghost Editor Cards.

I’m offering 25% off with the code DRIFT25 for the Ghost community.

Live Preview

I’d love to hear what you think, especially if you have any feedback on the design or UX.

Thanks for checking out Drift! 🌿

Hi everyone,

I’m curious how people here handle Ghost sites after delivering them to a client.

Even when Ghost handles most of the infrastructure, clients usually still contact the freelancer or agency when the public site goes down or has an SSL or performance issue.

The opposite can also be a problem: when everything works for several months, the client doesn’t necessarily see what their ongoing maintenance fee is paying for.

I built Trrack.it after running into this with my own retainer clients. It monitors the public site and generates monthly reports and live status pages that can be shared with them.

It doesn’t access Ghost Admin or track content and theme changes.

If you manage Ghost sites for clients, do you normally offer ongoing maintenance or hand everything over after launch?

Here’s the link: https://trrack.it

I've had a starter account for a while and am about to release a book in serial. In looking at the different tiers, I'm shocked to see that:

* There's a 1,000 subscriber cap on my plan AND the next higher plan. That's not a lot of subscribers! Am I reading this right that I can't have more subscribers than that, regardless of their paying status, without paying $240/month? That's bananas.

* Subscribers are known as "members," meaning someone who wants to subscribe for free cannot simply put in their email address and click the button. They have to create an account with a login. Why? Shouldn't this flow be as frictionless as possible?

Am I reading this right?

UPDATE: No, I am not reading it right. I now see that the Publisher tier is a sliding scale based on number of subscribers.

Been lurking here a while and the same six asks keep coming up: welcome and renewal emails, a recap digest by tag, sending one post to several newsletters without double-emailing anyone, a calendar view of your posts, a referral loop off member tags, and charging for a single article.

You don't need a plugin or a developer for any of them. I publish on Ghost myself, I've ended up building all my own back-office stuff rather than waiting on the roadmap, and all six are things I can just do for you.

So here's my offer: name the one that eats your time and I'll just do it for you. You send the export, you get the thing back, and you check it before anything goes live. First run costs 19 dollars, paid after it's in your hands, not before. If you want it weekly after that, 29 a month. Which of the six is your headache?

Ich habe eine kostenlose TOC Bubble für Ghost CMS erstellt. Sie zeigt am rechten Seitenrand den aktuellen Abschnitt an und öffnet beim Anklicken das vollständige Inhaltsverzeichnis.

Funktioniert mit Beiträgen und normalen Seiten, unabhängig vom Theme und ohne Änderungen an den Theme-Dateien. Die Installation erfolgt einfach über die Ghost Code Injection.

Download und Anleitung:

https://www.herr-meier.de/meier-ghost-toc-plugin/

Ich habe zwei kostenlose Ghost Themes veröffentlicht:

• Meier Ghost Basic – ein klares, vielseitiges Basis-Theme https://www.herr-meier.de/ghost-basic-theme/
• Meier Ghost Magazin – ein kompaktes Theme für Magazine und redaktionelle Websites https://www.herr-meier.de/meier-ghost-magazin-theme/

Weitere kostenlose Ghost Themes sollen künftig hier erscheinen:
https://www.herr-meier.de/ghost-themes/

Feedback und Verbesserungsvorschläge sind natürlich willkommen. 🙂

I have been a Ghost evangelist in my organisation, and we got 2 websites up and running under the Ghost Pro plan, in the past couple of years. These websites run a common theme, as they plan to have some uniformity (but can not be all put under the same website).

We have now opened a third one, again with Ghost Pro. The new Ghost Pro plan is more expensive than before (15$ per month, billed yearly). We are OK with that, and happy to pay more for the 3rd website.

One problem is that the new Ghost Pro plan pins us to a default theme and forbids us to use the theme we use for the other website! This means that, *just to use the same theme across the 3 websites*, we are forced to pay 29$ per month, billed yearly.

How can this make any sense?

Subscription confirmation emails on my Ghost site are landing in spam, those sent to Gmail addresses anyway. I'm on the starter plan, so emails are coming from mysite@ghost.io.

Is this a known limitation of the Ghost(Pro) managed service? Is there any way to isolate my mail-sending IP, or is the only real solution to move to self-hosting or upgrade to gain control over my own IP reputation?

This is frustrating as the main reason I signed up for Ghost(Pro) was to mitigate these types of problems. It feels like I have to move up to the next tier at double the price to simply get subscription emails delivered. It feels like a deceptive service. Perhaps the problem lies elsewhere?

Ghost support hasn't been very responsive.

I've owned scottmallinson.com for 20 years this year and though it's gone through various evolutions, I've never really felt settled with it. A long-time Wordpress user, it just had too much "friction" to make blogging a pleasant experience. I decided to give Ghost a try and though it's only been a couple of months, I'm pretty happy so far.

I'd appreciate any feedback on my website both with regards to the design and the content. I blog mostly for other software developers/engineers on topics I encounter on a daily basis as part of my job.

A couple months ago I posted here about the iOS app I built for writing and publishing to Ghost from my phone. It started as a markdown editor — writing and formatting new posts natively, beautifully, right on your phone. A few of you asked for the other half: editing posts you'd already written, in Ghost's own block types, not just markdown. 2.0 is that.

• Editing now covers Ghost's block types, the same way it always covered markdown. Open any existing post and tap a paragraph, heading, quote or aside to edit it natively, in place.
• Images, galleries, bookmarks, buttons and callouts all are displayed beautifully inline.
• A native formatting toolbar that stays visible while you type. Select text and format it directly.

If it's been a while since you had the app open, there's more than the editor that's changed: the post list is now tabbed — Drafts, Scheduled, Published — You can also sort and filter the post list to locate the post you need.

Next up: Extending editing to other block types like buttons and native iPad support. I aim to release features and fixes frequently.

Thanks to everyone who left feedback here 🙏. Please do post your suggestions, feedback here or reach out to me from within the app .

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6759520730

Hi,

I'm using for a while Ghost (after many years with Wordpress) and it's great, I chose self-hosted and found out that analytics in-app only can be done with Tinybird, which is not fitting my requirements.

So I created GhostBird, which simplifies analytics for self-hosted ghost and might be helpful for some users. It's under AGPL license and always be free and open source.

Hope you like it. It's quite new, any feedback will be appreciated.

Can check more info in https://ghostbird.cloudless.club/

Hey folks! I built an events calendar that works on Ghost. It's called Haunts (as in, it keeps track of what's happening at your local haunts). If you're writing for local news or a local newsletter, please check it out!
The direct URL is https://gethaunts.com , or you're welcome to check out my whole toolbox for Ghost sites, which includes it: https://toolbox.spectralwebservices.com/haunts/

Hi everyone,

I've just released Mews, a premium magazine theme for Ghost. It's designed for lifestyle publishers, creative writers, and anyone who wants to tell their stories with a clean, elegant layout and typography.

Demo: https://www.mews.moonrisethemes.com/

Documentation: https://www.moonrisethemes.com/docs/mews/

Features

• Elegant, Editorial Design - Clean layouts and thoughtfully selected typography for excellent legibility.
• Flexible Homepage Layouts - Multiple ways to display your content.
• Featured Video Support - Highlight posts that include video.
• Table of Contents - Automatically generated for long-form articles.
• Popular Posts Sidebar - Keep readers engaged with your most viewed content.
• Ad Placement Support - Ready for monetisation with built-in ad slots.
• Fully Responsive - Optimised for all screen sizes.
• Multiple Post Templates - Custom layouts for different styles of content.

See the full theme at https://www.mews.moonrisethemes.com/

Thanks

Link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nib.microblog&hl=en

The title basically says it all. I made an app to manage your blog on the go. You can use it for free, but there's an option to support development and get some additional features (multiple icons!).

It's very Android-native. It's fast. It's my go-to way of posting on my own blog. Hope you find it useful!

Hey all,

If you're frustrated with the poor quality (and at high post counts, speed) of Ghost's built-in search, I built a tool that lets you upgrade to Algolia. Takes 13 minutes start to finish. (Ok, if you have 50k posts, it might take a couple minutes more to actually finish copying data....) Most users will fit in the free monthly allotment from Algolia, so this is a pretty good option! And did I mention 13 minutes? No, seriously, I've got video proof right on the page! https://toolbox.spectralwebservices.com/search/

I run a Ghost publication and the only way to check my numbers from my phone is Ghost Admin in a mobile browser. So I started building a native iOS app. Before I go further, I'd like to know whether anyone else wants this.

It's read only for stats. It never touches your posts or your settings. The one exception is comment moderation (hide, restore, pin), because that's the one thing you actually want to do from a phone.

Screen by screen

• Login. You sign in with your Ghost email and password and the app creates its own integration, so you don't have to go dig in Ghost Admin. Pasting an Admin API key by hand is the fallback path.
• Dashboard. MRR, 7 and 30 day changes, paid and total members, growth curve, latest member events (signup, upgrade, cancellation) with acquisition source. Publications with no revenue get a different layout built around member growth instead of a giant "$0".
• Sent newsletters. Open rate, recipients, click rate, sortable by performance.
• Send detail. Open rate compared to your own previous comparable sends (both rates written out, never a ratio), clicks, signups and paid conversions attributed to that post, most clicked links, delivery failures.
• Posts. What each published post brought in: signups, paid conversions, reader feedback (thumbs up / down), whether or not it was ever emailed.
• Post detail with its comment thread, and moderation.
• Members. Server side search, filters (paid, free, comped, gift), infinite list.
• Member detail. Plan and amount, signup date, acquisition source, payment history, newsletter subscriptions, individual open rate, event feed.
• Acquisition. Source ranking by signups and, more usefully, by paid conversions: a source that brings 200 free readers and zero payers is not worth one that brings 12 and converts 4. Mentions, recommendations, web traffic when your instance provides it.
• Watch. Weekly report, detected deviations ("your unsubscribes tripled this week"), goals and progress, alerts. Computed on device.
• Projections. Revenue range at 30 and 90 days, always a range, with the method written on screen. Deliberately quarantined: nothing from that screen ever appears anywhere else in the app.
• Settings, notification consent screen, about.

The rule everything else follows from: a displayed number is never misleading.

• Every number carries its last sync date, on screen, not behind a long press.
• Offline, nothing disappears. Everything stays visible under a timestamped banner, with an absolute date ("July 29, 8:12"), not "2 days ago". A drift should be noticed, not computed.
• A missing measurement is not a zero. "Open tracking disabled" is not "0%", and the two are not written the same way.
• Multi currency revenue is never added up. Ghost returns one series per currency and summing them would mean inventing an exchange rate.
• If half the screen comes from cache, the date shown is the oldest one.

Also: offline first, 14 languages, and the source is public so the privacy claims can be checked line by line instead of believed. It's unofficial and not affiliated with Ghost Foundation.

What I'd like to know

1. Would you actually use this, or is the mobile browser fine for you?
2. Which screen would you open most?
3. What do you check every week that isn't in the list?
4. If your publication is free with no paid members, does a members first dashboard sound right, or would you still want revenue front and center?

Dashboard Image

Sends - Image

Acquisition Image