My old blog was getting a bit long in the tooth and I didn't like the technology behind it (Wordpress) for a long time. That's why I've now migrated from Wordpress to Ghost.

✨ Content-Migration

The migration is quite easy to do with Ghost's documentation:

Official guide: How to migrate from WordPress to Ghost

Everything you need to know about working with the Ghost professional publishing platform.

Ghost - The Professional Publishing Platform

🔦 Redirect published posts via .htaccess

It is now also important that all already published posts are redirected to the new URL. This is important for users as well as for SEO.

To do this, I also downloaded the JSON file and created a NodeJS script that automatically generates the redirects for me.

I can then easily integrate these redirects into my .htaccess file in Wordpress and all posts that have already been published will be moved to my new blog, yay! 🎉

I have provided you with the script as a Gist:

Wordpress to ghost redirections creator

Wordpress to ghost redirections creator. GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

Gist262588213843476

Have fun with it and good luck!

Why Ghost over WordPress?

The main reason for my switch was Ghost's performance and simplicity. WordPress has become a complex CMS over the years, which is significantly oversized for a simple blog. Ghost, on the other hand, focuses on the essentials: writing and publishing. The editor is fast, modern, and natively supports Markdown.

Another advantage is the built-in member management and newsletter feature. With WordPress, you need additional plugins like Mailchimp or WooCommerce Memberships for this – with Ghost, it's all already integrated. This saves not only money but also the maintenance effort for plugins.

Technical advantages

Ghost is based on Node.js and is therefore significantly faster than PHP-based WordPress installations. The API-first architecture also makes it possible to use the blog as a headless CMS and build your own frontend. The theme system is also much simpler – Handlebars templates instead of the complex WordPress theme system with PHP.

Docker is excellent for hosting, as Ghost is available as an official Docker image. This way you can start the blog with a single docker-compose up and have automatic updates and backups under control.

Further reading

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