_n a rush? Skip to technical tutorial or _live demo

As a kid, didn’t you love listening to ghost stories while sitting around a campfire? Some were lame, like Casper; some were kinda’ cool, like Bloody Mary; and some were just downright weird, like Shirime (yeah… I’ll let you look that one up yourself).

All these stories had one thing in common: they connected the listeners, even if for just a brief period of time.

But today, I’m going to use my Ghost demo to teach you how to connect with your readers for a long time. And to do that, we won’t be focused on stories about ghosts (don’t worry, those will be in there too) because we’ll actually be using the ghost itself.

Ghost CMS, that is.

Plus, in keeping with the spooky vibe of this post, let’s make that a Ghost gone headless. More specifically, in this article I am going to:

• Provide a brief history of Ghost CMS
• Explain why Ghost is a great tool for bloggers
• Discuss the benefits of using Ghost as a headless CMS
• Introduce you to making your Ghost site
• Create an automated content e-mail to keep your readers in the loop

But first things first, let’s get caught up on exactly what Ghost CMS is.

A brief history of Ghost CMS…

Ghost is a free, open-source platform designed with one thing in mind: minimalistic content publishing. In other words, Ghost is made for bloggers. Period. In fact, it was the brain-child of a former WordPress employee, John O’Nolan, so it’s no surprise that blogging stays fixed at this platform’s core.

O’Nolan worked with fellow coder Hannah Wolfe to create Ghost back in 2013 after getting frustrated with WordPress (and it is just me or have we been hearing that a lot in the last five years?). This probably doesn’t surprise you as Ghost is commonly touted as a sleeker WP alternative.

The overall goal was to create a platform that was simple, lean, and modern. Something with all the good parts of WordPress without being over-bloated. But the best description of Ghost comes from O’Nolan’s own words: it’s “just a blogging website.”

And it’s directly in that simplicity where Ghost’s force lies.

#go