Top all-time · #2626
John O'Nolan
Personal blog · john.onolan.orgstartupsbusinesswriting
John O'Nolan's personal blog at john.onolan.org covers startups, business and writing. Since 2009, 29 different Hacker News readers have linked it 33 times, most often “Ghost — rethinking WordPress”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-03-23, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (10) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Blog of John O'Nolan, Ghost's creator. HN links it for the history of Ghost: its origins, the YC rejection, the Kickstarter campaign and its non-profit status.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 10 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Founder/CEO @ Ghost.org — Geographically restless. Publishing, open source, and independent business around the world.
Most-linked posts?
- Ghost — rethinking WordPress4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2012-11-05
- The Price of Success3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-06-18
- A decade after being rejected by YC2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-10-31
- Ghost: From Fiction to Function2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-11-09
- Thoughts on Calypso, WordPress and JavaScript2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-12-01
- Democratising publishing2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-10-30
- 12 Years of Ghost2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-05-06
- Open Source in the Age of AI2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-02-26
- What Does It Really Mean to Be (an Open Source) Non-Profit?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-02-12
What Hacker News says?
We pay full corporation taxes and receive no tax benefits of any kind. As mentioned several times in this thread, our company is based in Singapore, not the US. The structures, laws and taxes are not equivalent. I wrote a post about this a while back here: https://john.onolan.org/what-it-means-to-be-non-profit/
Comment linking /what-it-means-to-be-non-profit/
on “What we've learned from building Ghost after 5 years and $3M”Submitted Ghost — rethinking WordPress as a story · 502 points
HN discussionVery interesting ideas here, for me particulary in the "free as in Mozilla, not as in Automattic" angle. Some might consider it blasphemy to say Auttomattic and WordPress have divergent goals so I'm glad people are having the discussion. All that said, I'm not sure I want a CMS from someone who uses images for text instead of actual text http://john.onolan.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/81.png
Comment linking /wp-content/uploads/2012/10/81.png
on “Ghost — rethinking WordPress”Submitted Democratising publishing as a story · 174 points
HN discussionYou are probably right. I still feel a lot of the original vision and promise of the project has been lost in this translation. Ghost origins were a promise of better blogging (it criticised WordPress for becoming a CMS and then it became a CMS itself). https://john.onolan.org/ghost/
Comment linking /ghost/
on “Ghost 5.0”Submitted The World’s Best Web Designers Are Unknown as a story · 20 points
HN discussionWhat strikes me about Ghost's story is that if they hadn't failed to get in to YC[0], they probably would have failed for real, because eventually the VCs would have come calling and they're obviously not a unicorn. Instead, they have a successful organization providing a livelihood for almost 50 people, and real value to countless more. [0]: https://john.onolan.org/a-decade-after-being-rejected-by-yc/
Comment linking /a-decade-after-being-rejected-by-yc/
on “Democratising publishing”Submitted A decade after being rejected by YC as a story · 7 points
HN discussionThe creator of ghost (the blogging platform) was a wordpress developer. He doesn't think that wordpress hasn't changed: > http://john.onolan.org/project-ghost/
Comment linking /project-ghost/
on “Drupal 8.0.0 released”Submitted Democratising Publishing as a story · 6 points
HN discussionThe original ghost platform was supposed to be developed in php http://john.onolan.org/ghost/ Im guessing thats why OP specified node.js in the title
Comment linking /ghost/
on “Ghost: The Future of Blogging (Node.js)”Submitted The Price of Success as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI signed up for an account today. They don't give much away on their homepage, so here's a preview of the current post editor for those interested: http://d.pr/i/189H You can sign up today for $5 and you won't be billed again until they're out of beta. I felt it was worth doing because I support their vision and I'm keen to see how it develops, even though the actual product is very bare bones at the moment. (e.g. N…
Comment linking /ghost/
on “Posthaven Launches In Public Beta”Submitted Dear Dribbble, I Quit. as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI thought I'd mention that this is the release for Kickstarter backers only right now. Unfortunately, I didn't find out about this project until after the KS so I am out of luck for a few weeks. If you don't know what Ghost is, I suggest you take a look at John O'Nolan's post from a while back that precipitated Ghost: http://john.onolan.org/ghost
Comment linking /ghost
on “Ghost 0.3 (Kerouac) Launches”Submitted Ghost: From Fiction to Function as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThanks for the kind words :) I wrote a series of posts a while back about all of the thinking which went into the campaign https://john.onolan.org/the-anatomy-of-a-successful-kickstar... - OP might find that useful. We borrowed a lot from other campaigns that came before us (Ouya/Pebble/etc)
Comment linking /the-anatomy-of-a-successful-kickstarter-campaign/
on “Ask HN: Best way to get pre-orders for software products?”Submitted Open Source Business as a story · 3 points
HN discussionWhen I came across the [Ghost]( http://john.onolan.org/ghost/ ) while reading HN I really liked it, and have thought about making something similar, but have never gotten around to it. In the last few days though I have put it together just as John described (I don’t know if its legal or morally right to publish it, but I will blog about it at least because I have spent some time on it. I finished working on the fif…
Comment linking /ghost/
on “I'm building Ghost”Submitted Open Source in the Age of AI as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Open Source in the Age of AI as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The State of Casual Blogging as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Thoughts on Calypso, WordPress and JavaScript as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted What Does It Really Mean to Be (an Open Source) Non-Profit? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Price of Success as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted I Built a CLI for Ghost as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted 12 Years of Ghost as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted 12 Years of Ghost as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Thoughts on Calypso, WordPress and JavaScript as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Building a startup is like as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
