Overview

WordPress

Stacks99.7K

Followers41.4K

Votes2.1K

GitHub Stars20.6K

Forks12.9K

Ghost

Stacks514

Followers506

Votes219

GitHub Stars51.1K

Forks11.1K

KeystoneJS

Stacks71

Followers209

Votes27

Ghost vs KeystoneJS vs WordPress: What are the differences?

Introduction: When choosing a content management system (CMS), there are a plethora of options available, each with its own unique features and advantages. Ghost, KeystoneJS, and WordPress are three popular CMS platforms that cater to different needs and preferences. Understanding the key differences between these platforms can help make an informed decision based on specific requirements.

Architecture and Technology Stack: Ghost is built using Node.js, which makes it fast, flexible, and efficient for handling content-heavy websites. KeystoneJS, on the other hand, is a powerful CMS and web application framework that is built on Express.js and MongoDB, offering a high level of customization and extensibility. WordPress is a PHP-based CMS that powers a significant portion of the internet, providing a wide range of plugins and themes for various needs.
Customization and Flexibility: Ghost focuses on simplicity and user-friendly design, providing limited customization options out of the box. KeystoneJS, being a backend-only CMS, offers extensive customization capabilities for developers and allows for building complex web applications. WordPress, with its vast library of themes and plugins, provides a high level of customization for both beginners and advanced users, making it ideal for a wide range of websites.
User Interface and User Experience: Ghost offers a clean and minimalist interface tailored for writers and bloggers, providing distraction-free content creation. KeystoneJS offers a sleek and modern admin interface for managing content, while also ensuring a seamless developer experience. WordPress, with its intuitive dashboard and user-friendly editor, caters to users of all skill levels, making it easy for beginners to get started with creating content.
Community and Support: Ghost has a smaller but dedicated community that focuses on providing quality documentation and support for users. KeystoneJS has a growing community of developers and contributors who actively improve the platform and provide assistance. WordPress boasts a massive community with extensive online resources, forums, and support channels, making it easy to find solutions to any issues or questions.
SEO Capabilities: Ghost offers built-in SEO features such as meta tags, automatic sitemap generation, and canonical tags to help optimize content for search engines. KeystoneJS allows developers to implement custom SEO strategies and plugins to enhance the visibility of websites. WordPress, with its vast array of SEO plugins like Yoast SEO, provides robust tools to improve on-page optimization and overall search engine rankings.
E-commerce Functionality: While Ghost and KeystoneJS are primarily focused on content management, WordPress has extensive e-commerce capabilities through plugins like WooCommerce, allowing users to create online stores and sell products efficiently. This makes WordPress a preferred choice for businesses looking to integrate e-commerce functionality into their websites.

In Summary, understanding the key differences between Ghost, KeystoneJS, and WordPress in terms of architecture, customization, user experience, community support, SEO capabilities, and e-commerce functionality can help in making an informed decision based on specific requirements.

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Advice on WordPress, Ghost, KeystoneJS

Kamaldeep

CEO at Zhoustify Agency

Nov 13, 2020

Decided

I usually take a slightly different tack because the technical level of people I usually am dealing with is lower. I tend to be pitching to decision makers and not tech people. A bit of my standard answer is below.

Wix and Squarespace are proprietary systems meant for unsophisticated users who want to build their own websites quickly and easily. While they are good for that specific use case, they do not offer any way to move beyond that if your needs arise. Since they are proprietary closed systems if you need something more advanced at some point your only option is to start over.

WordPress is an Open Source CMS that allows much more freedom. It is not quite as simple to setup and create a new site but if you are talking to me then you are not looking to build it yourself so that is really a non-issue. The main benefit of WordPress is freedom. You can host it on virtually any decent web hosting service and since it uses PHP and MySQL you can have virtually any developer take over a project without problem.

I believe in open source because of that freedom. It is good for me as a developer and it is good for my clients. If something were to happen to me or my company you would have no problem finding another qualified WordPress developer to take over the site in a totally seamless fashion. There would be no need to start from scratch.

Additionally the extensible nature of WordPress means that no matter what your future needs, WordPress can handle it. Adding things like e-commerce and custom quoting systems are just two examples of advanced solution's that I have added to WordPress sites years after they were first built.

WordPress is used by tiny one person businesses all the way up to major websites like the NY Times and I think it is right for this project as well.

69.1k views69.1k

Comments

Xander

Founder at Rate My Meeting

Mar 30, 2020

Decided

So many choices for CMSs these days. So then what do you choose if speed, security and customization are key? Headless for one. Consuming your own APIs for content is absolute key. It makes designing pages in the front-end a breeze. Leaving Ghost and Cockpit. If I then looked at the footprint and impact on server load, Cockpit definitely wins that battle.

243k views243k

Comments

Dragos

Jan 6, 2020

Decided

10 Years ago I have started to check more about the online sphere and I have decided to make a website. There were a few CMS available at that time like WordPress or Joomla that you can use to have your website. At that point, I have decided to use WordPress as it was the easiest and I am glad I have made a good decision. Now WordPress is the most used CMS. Later I have created also a site about WordPress: https://www.wpdoze.com

244k views244k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

WordPress	Ghost	KeystoneJS
The core software is built by hundreds of community volunteers, and when you’re ready for more there are thousands of plugins and themes available to transform your site into almost anything you can imagine. Over 60 million people have chosen WordPress to power the place on the web they call “home” — we’d love you to join the family.	Ghost is a platform dedicated to one thing: Publishing. It's beautifully designed, completely customisable and completely Open Source. Ghost allows you to write and publish your own blog, giving you the tools to make it easy and even fun to do.	Keystone is the easiest way to build database-driven websites, applications and APIs in Node.js.
Flexibility;Publishing Tools;User Management;Media Management;Full Standards Compliance;Easy Theme System;Extend with Plugins;Built-in Comments;Search Engine Optimized;Multilingual;Easy Installation and Upgrades;Importers;Own Your Data	An intuitive, minimal editor; Ultra-fast content management; All SEO features built-in natively; Native desktop & mobile apps; Publish once, distribute everywhere; Headless CMS with Node.js REST APIs; Over 19x faster than WordPress; Secure & independently audited; Custom theme or any JAMstack front-end	Express.js and MongoDB;Dynamic Routes;Database Fields;Auto-generated Admin UI;Simpler Code;Form Processing;Session Management;Email Sending
Statistics
GitHub Stars 20.6K	GitHub Stars 51.1K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 12.9K	GitHub Forks 11.1K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 99.7K	Stacks 514	Stacks 71
Followers 41.4K	Followers 506	Followers 209
Votes 2.1K	Votes 219	Votes 27
Pros & Cons
Pros 417 Customizable 368 Easy to manage 356 Plugins & themes 259 Non-tech colleagues can update website content 248 Really powerful Cons 13 Plugins are of mixed quality 13 Hard to keep up-to-date if you customize things 10 Not best backend UI 2 Complex Organization 1 Do not cover all the basics in the core	Pros 45 Beautiful 35 Fast 29 Quick/simple post styling 20 Open source 20 Live Post Preview	Pros 7 Out-of-box tools and basic services 3 Large community 2 Great CMS and API platform 2 Great sandbox to play with nodejs 2 Great schema-based auto-generated admin interface
Integrations
ClickTale Clicky Disqus Formstack GoSquared HipChat Hipmob KickoffLabs KISSmetrics LiveChat	No integrations available	Node.js MongoDB ExpressJS

What are some alternatives to WordPress, Ghost, KeystoneJS?

Drupal

Drupal is an open source content management platform powering millions of websites and applications. It’s built, used, and supported by an active and diverse community of people around the world.

Strapi

Strapi is100% JavaScript, extensible, and fully customizable. It enables developers to build projects faster by providing a customizable API out of the box and giving them the freedom to use the their favorite tools.

Wagtail

Wagtail is a Django content management system built originally for the Royal College of Art and focused on flexibility and user experience.

OctoberCMS

It is a Laravel-based CMS engineered for simplicity. It has a simple and intuitive interface. It provides a consistent structure with an emphasis on reusability so you can focus on building something unique while we handle the boring bits.

Twill

Twill is an open source CMS toolkit for Laravel that helps developers rapidly create a custom admin console that is intuitive, powerful and flexible.

ProcessWire

ProcessWire is an open source content management system (CMS) and web application framework aimed at the needs of designers, developers and their clients. ProcessWire gives you more control over your fields, templates and markup than other platforms, and provides a powerful template system that works the way you do

Typo3

It is a free and open-source Web content management system written in PHP. It can run on several web servers, such as Apache or IIS, on top of many operating systems, among them Linux, Microsoft Windows, FreeBSD, macOS and OS/2.

Directus

Let's say you're planning on managing content for a website, native app, and widget. Instead of using a CMS that's baked into the website client, it makes more sense to decouple your content entirely and access it through an API or SDK. That's a headless CMS. That's Directus.