My blog is currently running on Ghost 1.0 I’m blogging for almost 20 years, started with blogger.com I think, eventually migrated to self-hosted Ghost when it was pretty new and lightweight. I can host anything that runs on Linux, I can even use Docker.
I don’t want to migrate to the latest Ghost version because it feels very enterprisey now, needs a lot of resources on the server and uses a complex data format instead of Markdown. I don’t need monetization either.
My requirements are:
- possible to migrate ~30-40 Markdown posts + embedded images from Ghost 1.0
- future proof, i.e. simple data format so I don’t get locked in
- low RAM/CPU usage
- easy maintenance, creating posts, backups, etc
- RSS support
I’ll be very grateful for any suggestions.
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I use 11ty to host my static site. I’ve used it for years. It’s well documented and learning resources.
Have you taken a look at bear blog, it uses markdown or html and aimed to be small and maintainable well into the figure
I’ve already looked into bear blog, I really like the philosophy behind it. The reason I don’t use it is because ideally I want to self-host, and bear blog is not open-source. Also, I want to embed images in my blog, and from what I’ve seen, you have to either take care of the image hosting yourself or pay a monthly fee. It also looks like the backups are only text, no images, which could make migration to a different platform painful. I had the same issue with blogger.com back in the day, it was possible to export the text, but then the image links were all still pointing to Google’s CDN.
Maybe write freely would be an option? There is also a hosted version of it on write.as. It also speaks Activity Pub so it would be published on the fediverse too. I’ve not looked super deeply into the technology, but considered using it for my (future) blog.
Eleventy works for me.
Check out bludit.com (don‘t mind .com), stores posts in static files (front matter or md, not sure), has some plugins and themes. Worth a look.
On my „check later, no time at the moment list“ ist publii (https://getpublii.com/) - maybe also worth a look.
Depending on exactly what features you actually need in term of things like commenting, you might want to look into a static site generator. Something like hugo woud probably do what you need in terms of translating the markdown into a blog. It has the advantage that you can them host the pages on a normal web server, rather than running a blogging platform, giving you a much lighter weight server footprint, and a much smaller attack surface too.
I don’t really need comments, only RSS. Hugo is a great piece of software, I actually use it for my personal webpage. It would be an option for the blog too, my only gripe is that it adds some friction. For example if I want to embed images, I have to upload them somewhere, and manually insert the filename. I also need regenerate the site if I add new posts. I know this can be automated using scripts.
With Ghost it’s very simple, I can just write a post, upload the images, hit “Publish” and done. There was even a mobile app for writing new posts, but it doesn’t work anymore.
Hugo can handle images through its asset pipelines, so you should be able to just store them with your markdown. I agree it’s a little more friction than a blogging pkatform, but it does mean that you can just write your posts in your editor of choice and publish them with just a command, or if you’re feeling fancy, set up git to trigger publishing when you push.
I love ghost’s UI and feature set.
What complex data format are you taking about? Last time I checked, it was plain markdown in a database (even supporting sqlite).
What I’d recommend though, is coupling it with a static site generator and only using the ghost server for the administration / authoring (guides). That way, serving the blog to visitors is basically free in terms of resources (at last as low as it gets). You could even push these static builds to a CDN (yes yes, selfhost community, I’m just saying it for completeness)
It might be some hassle to set this up somehow, but you could even have the container stopped unless you actively need it. You could even run the server application on your computer instead of the server, unless you want to access is from a smartphone/tablet.
If you really want an alternative to Ghost and don’t need user management and an online WYSIWYG editor, you could go straight to an SSG and feed itraw it markdown files.
From what I’ve read, the new editor does not use Markdown by default anymore. It’s possible to create a Markdown “card” but that’s still embedded in the new format. So it’s very easy to accidentally create posts that cannot be exported as plain .md anymore.
From the link above:
Koenig has now been rebuilt on a new stack: React.js and Lexical — both of which are open source frameworks developed by Meta. So, Ghost is now using the same underlying technology that powers every single editor, comment box, or user input for billions of users across Facebook and Instagram.
The static site generator is a very cool idea, I didn’t know Ghost could do that.
Ah, right its stored as (rather basic) html instead of markdown.
I had looked into GRAV which is not quite suited for blogging (i.e. date-based posts) but rather for wiki-like content or a simple page structure. Also, they’re also feeling more and more enterprisey, especially with their recent 2.x release.
Tried Serendipity but found it to be more or less on life-support.
And finally settled on a very basic WordPress with only a handful of plugins (all set to auto-update), most importantly SQLite and ActivityPub. Backups are a simple copy of all the files or just the SQLite db. The Gutenberg post format in the SQLite db is easy enough to convert it to anything else using a small custom Python script should need be. I don’t remember how I imported my existing posts, though. Might’ve been via RSS import.
I run Ghost along with a dozen other services on a N100 Mini PC without issue. All files are stored as .md. And you can disable monetization, as I have.
My only gripe is that they implemented email authentication, which honestly infuriates me maybe more than it should.
And also their half-assed implementation of ActivityPub.
But can you be more specific about what you don’t like so that we can recommend a suitable alternative? Are you just looking for something as lightweight as humanly possible?
I don’t like how it’s now a very large piece of software with a lot of features I don’t need. I’ve tried never versions. The backend is now a confusing “dashboard”. I started with version v0.x, the last upgrade I did was v1.0. They are now on v6.0 which was released in August 2025. If you look at their Github releases, the latest is v6.67.0. That means it takes them less than a week to push a new version. Apparently, the project has more than a million lines of code. To me that’s crazy! I want a stable, low-maintenance thing I don’t have to constantly keep up to date.
As it is, I cannot even re-install Ghost v1.0 anymore without headaches, they don’t support it. Apparently it has major security issues, so the only “sane” option for continuing with Ghost is doing all the upgrades.
