Ghost 6.0 is here

Well, this was a pleasant surprise to wake up to: Ghost 6.0 has launched:

In Ghost 6.0 we're introducing another new distribution channel: The social web. Now, millions of people can discover, follow, like and reply to your posts from any supported social web client - including Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, Flipboard, Ghost, WordPress, Surf, WriteFreely, and many more.

That's big news for the independent publishing ecosystem, because Ghost and its ilk are the backbone of the new, emergent form of journalism that's been steadily growing for some months now. The better this underlying technology gets, the better it is for the whole journalism ecosystem.

And the more we understand our audiences, and the easier we can connect with them without an intermediating layer of platforms, the better.

So, what's in the new version that's facilitating this?

What's in Ghost 6.0?

There's a bunch of new features, but the two big ones are:

• Fediverse social integration, using ActivityPub to connect Ghost with many other platforms and tools.
• Built in web analytics

The first I'm more familiar with, as I've been using it since the early alpha. I think it changes things dramatically, and in an important way for publishers. If you want a vague point of reference, think of the social ecosystem Substack has built around publications on that platform – but built on open standards instead, with the potential to reach much bigger audiences.

This is like catnip for me, and to say I'm excited would be an understatement. But I'll save a deeper dive on what this could mean for a future post.

The second is both great, and slightly amusing, as it finally fulfils Ghost co-founder John O'Nolan's original vision for a Ghost Dashboard from 13 years ago… I gather that he was constantly asked about it for literally years after Ghost was released. To his blessed relief, I’m sure, that pestering can go away.

I need to spend a while with the features I didn't get to use in the ActivityPub beta before I can write more intelligently about the new version. But I'm certainly excited to see it live, and will be updating my various Ghost sites to it as quickly as I can.

A little surprise

The marketing page for 6.0 has the usual list of high-profile users:

Platformer. Tangle. These are serious publications.

The Lever looks like exactly the sort of exciting journalism outlet that platforms like Ghost facilitate. And is that MG Siegler's Spyglass?

Ah, yes. But wait… that last one…

Well, that's flattering. And something that feels challenging to live up to…

I really better get back to it, hadn't I?

Given that I'm on the marketing page, you might guess that OM&HB is now running on Ghost 6.0. And you'd be right.

(Thanks to Alberto for flagging up my presence on the page.)