Ghost Gizmos?
Keep it simple. Keep it minimal. Make it just work.
The Ghost core development team’s approach is to provide a writer-focused, open-source, online publishing system that is extraordinary for its speed, efficiency and simplicity. This is Ghost's opinionated “superpower”.
As a site builder, the value proposition here is that I get to start every site project with a super fast-loading “clean slate”. The core system is as simple and extensible as it can be for site builders who are comfortable working with copy-and-paste CSS, HTML and Javascript.
A freshly installed Ghost site is truly minimal right out of the box, so there is no need to remove and disable and replace features that are not wanted or needed. Building a site with Ghost is purely an additive process.
If you just want to write somewhere online, in your own space, you can simply do that. Ghost stays out of your way. No technical challenges. No visual clutter. No wasted time.
These days, every capability or feature we might want to add or build into our workflow is available online in the form of subscription-based hosted apps that natively share and exchange data, and can be embedded into a website. The array of options is dizzying.
In this regard, Ghost provides a most refreshing and elegant core extension system.
Specifically, "Code Injection" blocks are a core component of the Ghost editor for conveniently inserting CSS, Javascripts and other copy-and-paste code that work globally across all pages of the site, or just on individual pages, or on collections of pages with specific tags. So if you want to add a new feature or capability for only one page, or for only a section of the site, or for the entire site, you can do it through the front end editor.
Other site-building platforms such as Wordpress and Drupal can only be made to accept code injections through third-party plugins and modules with questionable stability and no guarantee of future support.
Another powerful feature of Ghost, available right in the editor, is the ability to create and re-use content snippets and templates.
Snippets and templates are a useful way to quickly store pieces of content on-the-fly that you'll want to re-use in other posts or pages. For example, images, a company logo, a newsletter layout, third-party embeds, some HTML or blocks of text can all be simply highlighted with the mouse, named and stored right inside the editor for future use.
But content snippets and templates in Ghost can also contain HTML, CSS and Javascript! This opens up a world of additional features you can have at your fingertips as you write and compose in your Ghost site.
By combining Code Injections, Templates, and Snippets (I call these my "ghizmos") we can create some pretty tasty site recipes. This site is a collection of my favorite ghizmos and recipes which you can also import into your own Ghost site to simplify your writing process and make the most of your Ghost!