Blogs of War Gets a New Look (and a New Platform)
I've periodically checked in on the Ghost publishing platform as a potential solution over the past couple of years. I wasn't quite ready to make the move in 2015 or 2016 but I recently checked back in on the project and liked what I saw.
Regular readers might remember the blog moving from Wordpress to the Silvrback platform in 2015. I loved Silvrback's minimalism, use of markdown, and low administrative overhead. Damian Sowers, Silvrback's creator, sold the company soon after which eventually resulted in a reluctant migration back to Wordpress.
I've periodically checked in on the Ghost publishing platform as a potential solution over the past couple of years. I wasn't quite ready to make the move in 2015 or 2016 but I recently checked back in on the project and liked what I saw. I also found myself with enough free time on my hands to consider a move. Two weeks ago I bit the bullet and started mapping out yet another migration.
Now, roughly 100 hours later, you're looking at a shiny new version Blogs of War. It has a subscription feature so that you can register for updates about new posts and podcast episodes. It has support for Accelerated Mobile Pages. It supports Markdown (invisible to readers - but great for writers). It also supports SSL (give it a try).
Other services have changed as well. Ghost.org provides comprehensive hosting support that includes security, backup, and upgrades of the Ghost software. I've also pulled in CloudFlare for DNS, caching (image below), image optimization, and security services (another overdue change).
Despite the fact that I changed literally everything, the migration itself was relatively painless - at least as far as migrations go. Most of my time has been spent doing things like editing content to remove legacy HTML and unnecessary formatting, finding new images and optimizing them, embedding episodes of Covert Contact on all the podcast entries, and updating the About, Contact, FAQ, and Media pages.
All of this is going to cost substantially more than my previous arrangement so if, by some chance, you appreciate what I do on this site, on Twitter, and on Covert Contact there is also a new Support page that details a couple of ways that you can help.
As always, thanks for reading and listening. Oh, don't forget to look at the Home page on your way out.