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Hello Fedi friends! This is a routine reminder that I've just migrated my Ghost blog to a self-hosted instance.

If you follow #TheFutureIsFederated via RSS, please update the feed's URL:

news.elenarossini.com/rss/

And if you had bookmarked any of my old posts, they'll still work if you refresh the page... or else just swap "blog" with "news" in the address bar.

This is my proudest moment in #MySoCalledSudoLife as I installed everything with commands. I've learned so much these past 4 months!

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Elena Rossini ⁂

@fedistu thank you Stu! ❤️

It was a WHOLE SAGA (not at all the fault of Ghost, it's awesome software)... maybe I'll write about it at some point 😅

in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂

So, the good news: You learned a lot of stuff.

The bad news: You are going to now spend the rest of your life maintaining an increasingly large set of stuff that is very slightly broken in subtle ways. If it isn't broken, you're going to add things to it until it is.

At least, assuming your journey is anything like mine...

Oh, and you're going to keep doing it because the managed / hosted alternatives are all slightly worse and a lot worse on one important axis that you care about. And every time they look like they'll catch up, you'll discover some other reason why they're not quite as good as something you can host yourself.

This entry was edited (2 weeks ago)
in reply to David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)

@david_chisnall I hear you David. I've been self-hosting 4 Wordpress sites for more than a decade...

Ghost on a VPS takes things up a notch but I'm enjoying these new challenges

in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂

congrats!!!

Next project: document all your setup steps from a non-expert perspective so you can refer to it in the future and others can follow your steps 🤓👍

in reply to Erick

@erick thank you and absolutely!

This was a whole SAGA (by no means the fault of Ghost) and I even found bugs in the official documentation, so I will definitely write about it and reach out to Ghost with feedback.

in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂

@Elena Rossini ⁂ Oooh exciting, how are you liking it so far? How tough was it compared to some of the other Fedi self hosting you’ve done? Been thinking about migrating my blogging activities to Ghost myself.
in reply to Grow Fediverse

@growfediverse aw how do I answer this great question in 500 characters or less?

LOVING it so far and feeling very proud about installing all this in terminal. The hardest thing? Setting up a proper caching system to withstand the Mastodon stampede.

I have 15+ years experience with Wordpress and I LOVE it in many many ways. There are pluses for WP (theme customization) and others for Ghost (the elegance of its integrated newsletter).

I'll keep using both 💞

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mastodon - Link to source
Elena Rossini ⁂

@alwirtes I'm GLAD I know nothing about this stuff... the more I know, the more scared I would be about messing up my VPS (I think).

Beginner's luck: I just followed online tutorials 💁‍♀️

in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂

I love how the swirl in the arrow indicates that the transition was not free of struggles 😅👍🏻

Congrats!
in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂

How's it compare to Wordpress? I'm temped to move to hosted Ghost for my newsletter, but the costs are a bit higher than what I'd like. Of course my hosting company can't host Ghost for me, which is annoying.
in reply to Aaron

@Aaron if newsletters are important to you, I would DEFINITELY go with Ghost. Their newsletters and the integration with a site are the best in the industry IMHO. And I've tried everything under the sun.

The added value of Ghost is that whenever you post something you can 1) just post it as a newsletter 2) just post it as a blog post 3) send it as a blog post AND newsletter.

The system is beautifully designed and has lots of advanced functionalities

in reply to Elena Rossini ⁂

That's really great to know, thank you!

I need to add up the costs for: my hosting, WP backups + extra space, newsletter system plugins, etc and see if it's close to what Ghost would cost me. I only have a few paying members, so I have to be mindful of making sure TimeMachiner pays for itself.

I think they have a great wordpress migration system, which would be real handy.

in reply to Aaron

@Aaron totally legit concerns Aaron. Let me know what you decide / if you have any questions about Ghost. I was on their Ghost (Pro) plan for a year and now I'm self-hosting