I recently moved this site away from Squarespace, where it was a blog with an accidental newsletter attached, to a hosted instance of Ghost (Pro).  The intention was to use a platform that made it easier to publish my newsletter and blog content.

A few thoughts worth about a this move:

  • Squarespace is an excellent website host and site builder and will run your newsletter quite successfully and beautifully.  However, I ran into a few limitations which frustrated me, and drove me to look elsewhere.  The first was the inability for me to write a newsletter and then publish it as a blog entry, I had to do everything manually there. Ghost will manage this automatically (write once, use many).    The second was the speed of the blogging platform on Squarespace, which I found was a barrier to writing.  In my initial test with Ghost, the writing window is blisteringly fast.
  • Migration from Squarespace to Ghost is not supported by the Ghost team, who are amazingly helpful in every case.   There is an existing methodology which is pretty technical, but my advice is to contact the Ghost support team for any advice you need.  My content was moved over, but it needed a fair amount of manual 'fixing' to make it readable on Ghost.
  • I needed to maintain two subscriptions at once for a couple of weeks whilst I made my content look healthy and get everything organised.  So don't do a migration like this if you are up against a deadline.
  • Ghost is a fantastic platform, but it's simplicity of use means that it might not have the flexibility of (say) a Wordpress solution or similar.  Please evaluate against your needs.  My use case is a 'robust newsletter with a simple blog and some pages attached' - this seems perfect for Ghost for now.
  • Changing DNS and domains is still the scariest thing I must do.

I'm currently settling into the Ghost platform, and I'm looking forward to how it can 'get out of the way' and let me write and engage my newsletter audience.

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