In short: I want to focus more on content
That being said, switching technology is not something to do on a whim. So there has been a whole thought process before I made this decision.
In recent years my personal website (the one you're on right now) has moved from Wordpress to Webflow to now finally Ghost. Here's my personal opinion on these platforms from the experience I have with them:
Wordpress
Wordpress started out as a blogging platform. But in recent years it has had a bit of an identity crisis and right now it's all over the place. Not to mention all the security issues it is having.
So I moved on to Webflow.
Webflow
Coming from Wordpress, I loved how easy it was to design custom pages in Webflow. Combine this with their CMS features and I thought I had finally found the ideal website platform for years to come.
So why did I leave?
The problem with a platform where it's so easy to design new pages in the web interface is that everytime I was supposed to write an article... you guessed it, I was working on the page design instead.
That being said I'm still using Webflow for my other business website, Convertis, since this website is less about sharing my story with the world and more about presenting services to clients.
Why I chose Ghost
Enter Ghost.
One of the things I have been working on in the past year and that I am planning to increasingly work on this year is sharing my story. This something I have already done with my podcast and on my YouTube channel. And since I love reading stories from other people, I also want to increase the written stories I share.
Exploring the possibility of moving my website to Ghost is something that has been on my Thins to do list for the past year. Literally.
So after playing around with Ghost for a while, here are the things that convinced me to move my personal website to Ghost:
Simplicity of the CMS. I love how Ghost is really focused on writing content and less on designing pages. As a matter of fact, it's impossible to design a page in Ghost's web interface. And the writing experience itself is fantastic as well.
Integrations. Ghost easily integrates with a bunch of apps and platforms. Two of them which I am using myself already: Ulysses and Github.
Ulysses provides me with a nice, distraction free interface to focus on writing. And once I'm done writing I can easily publish my content to my Ghost website, right from the app.
With Github I can easily manage my Ghost theme and deploy it to my live website. I love using Github for this since it also gives me a backup and track record of all the changes I've made. Something I'm also doing for most of my client projects.
Web content and email go together. With Ghost you can send out an email to your audience at the same time that you're publishing a new post to your website. I love how this closes the gap between my email newsletter and blog.
And last but not least, I feel it makes me want to write more. Earlier today I have already updated my about page and I love how the focus now was on the content instead of on how I would make it look in the design.
Bringing everything together
I also used this opportunity to bring all of my written content together in one place. In the past I used to only write business related content on this website and I would publish any other article I would write on Medium. The reason why I'm bringing everything together here is simple: It's all part of my life and this website is about me after all.
So from now on you will be able to read anything I write on Business, Marketing, HubSpot, E-Commerce, Technology, Lifestyle, Travel (I have some great tips for NYC!) and even just my general thoughts on things right here on this website.
👉 Follow me on Twitter as I continue to document my journey.
Listen to the podcast episode
Update: After a couple of months of having my website on Ghost I decided to move it back to Webflow. The website just wasn't quite there yet from a visual perspective, which was hurting conversions as well. I might go back to Ghost at some point as I still love the platform.
