I've been running a couple blogs on Ghost 👻 for about a year now. It looks amazing, it's simple to customize, and their admin panel is insanely easy to use. My only real complaint has been the setup...until now.

When I first began using Ghost, you had to do quite a bit on your own. Setting up a reverse proxy isn't that hard if you know what you're doing, but like anything in tech, the "if you know what you're doing" qualifier makes a huge difference.

When Ghost hit version 1.0, they released ghost-cli, an npm package that does all the heavy lifting for you.

First, ghost-cli sets up nginx for you. This step can be difficult for beginners, so this is probably the biggest feature in terms of making Ghost accessible.

The Ghost CLI also gives you the option to create an SSL certificate using Letsencrypt. This is another game changer - even as HTTPS becomes the norm (starting next month, serving plain HTTP will actually hurt you SEO-wise), people will usually cut corners because this isn't always easy.

My favorite part is how these two features work together. Ghost actually sets you up with a pretty comprehensive SSL configuration in nginx. I've set this up manually, and ghost-cli is a massive time saver.

I should also mention that it now works with process managers like forever. Pre-CLI Ghost didn't always cooperate in that area.

Ghost doesn't do everything - if you need a full-featured CMS, you're still better off with Wordpress. But if you just want a simple, powerful blog, Ghost is definitely worth a look.