So, having recently decided to restart a blog (or collection of random rants) the obvious first question is what software to use.

This is my fourth incarnation of a blog, having started with b2, then a custom thing and finally finding my way - like everyone else - to Wordpress. I like Wordpress, but it's far too bloated for my simple blog, and I've never been a huge fan of the WYSIWYG editor)

Increasingly Wordpress has grown beyond simple blogs - there's a few sites using it as a 'full CMS' and a friend of mine even runs her small online store and ticket booking for "The Wee Food Tour" using it (as an aside, check her out if you're ever in Glasgow).

I didn't want a full CMS (my website is basically a static HTML page anyway) and then I saw this - http://john.onolan.org/project-ghost/ - someone looking for the same as me; just a blog, but actually went and built it.

I've recently started dabbling with Node.js in a few projects, and when I saw Ghost, which is written entirely from scratch in Node, I was intrigued.

I love the UI of Ghost, it's clean, lets me write in Markdown and the realtime preview is fantastic, it's everything a simple blog engine should be.

Hosted services like Medium come close, and I did actually dabble with a couple of articles there, intending to chart 'a journey skywards' (or, specifically, me attempting to learn how to fly an aeroplane) but the terms and conditions put me off;

Firstly, I don't like adverts

By posting content to Medium, you give us a nonexclusive license to publish it on Medium Services, including anything reasonably related to publishing it (like storing, displaying, reformatting, and distributing it). In consideration for Medium granting you access to and use of the Services, you agree that Medium may enable advertising on the Services, including in connection with the display of your content or other information. We may also use your content to promote Medium, including its products and content. We will never sell your content to third parties without your explicit permission.

And secondly;

We can remove any content you post for any reason.

Seems a bit overreaching.

I like hosting this, I like that I own the content, not just in the legal sense but that the actual data lives on servers I control and I can move, copy or change it at any time.

Ghost is completely new to me, but so far so good, and it's nice to see innovative web applications popping up in Node - it is, however, a little odd to have a daemon running just for my blog, rather than just a collection of php files in a directory.