Post · bonfire.cafe

The 🐈 is out of the 👜:

My Ghost blog is now federated – @ele – thanks to the wonderful Magic Pages (@hey) by @jannis@jannis.io.

My latest post, which also mentions some of my self-hosting exploits from this past year:

🔗: https://blog.elenarossini.com/the-rebellion-will-be-federated-2025-edition/

This is what I referred to when I said that "I got a big blue whale off my back" a few days ago. I don't have to worry about #Docker anymore, as I put my blog in the expert hands of Jannis at Magic Pages. My big lesson from this year has been: self-hosting is empowering and a lot of fun... but sometimes it makes more sense to turn to experts and pay them to manage your essential stuff. Like in this case.

And I will be saving money too (it's a lot cheaper than paying for a basic plan at Mailgun + my VPS). I'm just so relieved. And Ghost v6 is incredible. I will write more about this soon...

#blog #Ghost #MySoCalledSudoLife

mkj

@mkj@social.mkj.earth replied · last week

@elena "sometimes it makes more sense to turn to experts and pay them to manage your essential stuff" Yes!

And you know what? *That's fine!*

The key is to have and maintain data and service portability and some kind of exit strategy, ideally including automated recurring, easily importable backups. That way, if the provider turns bad at some point, your loss is limited to at most any pre-paid amount plus the time to set up shop somewhere else and re-import whatever you had stored with them.

Richard MacManus

@ricmac@mastodon.social replied · last week

@elena @ele @hey Congrats on a successful year, Elena! Interesting to hear about Magic Pages; I think less expensive options for Ghost (and indeed other Substack alternatives) is much needed in the open web. I am using the official Ghost org for @feed, but it's rather pricey, as is Buttondown (which I use for Cybercultural.com). So hopefully in 2026 we see more vendors like Magic Pages coming in to help lower prices. Competition is good!

Jannis Fedoruk-Betschki

@jannis@www.jannis.io replied · last week

There's been a lot of movement in the space in the last year or so.

Apart from Magic Pages (https://www.magicpages.co), there's also Synaps Media (https://www.synapsmedia.com), Midnight (https://getmidnight.com), and Typetale (https://typetale.app), who all support Ghost 6 features.

Digitalpress (https://www.digitalpress.blog) is also an option, though I have no idea about their Ghost 6 viability, since they never spoke about it pubilcly.

Elena Rossini on GoToSocial ⁂

@elena@aseachange.com replied · last week

@ricmac @ele @hey @feed thank you Richard.

I actually moved from Substack to Ghost (Pro) in January 2024... then I set up my self-hosted Ghost blog this spring, learning a bit of Linux to be able to do that.

But Docker proved to be too hard to learn for a newbie like me... and I really wanted to enjoy Ghost v6's new features. So: Magic Pages.

Jannis is a total rock star and moved everything super quickly. I could not have done it on my own.

Sometimes it is much better to turn to experts 😅