Ghost Versus WordPress

There are two ideas driving people's software choices.  One is that you need a developer to build a website, and two is that there are plenty of WordPress developers  Both are wrong.   

It is really quite easy for an end user to build and manage a web site using ghost.  Easy way to get started is to attend my monthly Ghost classes.  And secondly, the Green Party does not have enough word press developers.  Not only are most Green Websites out of date, but here are 95 out of 210 candidates who did not even have a web site  Even if you find a WordPress developer, you are depriving someone else of a Word Press developer.  Better to use software which does not need a developer, freeing up those scarce resources for more valuable shared projects.  The Green Party needs a culture of free, easy-to-use, software which shares the work and minimizes required developer resources.  All of us are more important than any of us.   

So first of all ghost versus Wordpress is not a fair comparison  Ghost does a lot more out-of-the-box, than WordPress. To get WordPress to do as much, you have to install a lot of plugins.  I do not even know which ones.  And then you have a system which is cobbled together, lots of menus to navigate.  Much easier to go with ghost out of the box. 

then there is the issue of speed.  ghost caches all pages natively..  Wordpress recalculates every page on every call.  that is way way slower.  HowieHawkins.US has gorgeous graphics, but takes 16 seconds to load from Europe.  Ridiculous.  Ghost.org supports a global cdn, so is blindingly fast eveywhere.  Or you can host more cheeply yourself. 

Ghost also has a better user model. Out-of-the-box it supports subscibers, both paid and free, authors, editors, and site admins.  
And a quick read of Ghost security pages look awesome.  Quite impossible to make WordPress secure when you have a random collection of plugins added to the base configuration.