Why we chose Ghost

Within my own lifetime, websites have shifted from a novelty to a core component of any organization's identity. As we moved towards incorporating MALT, it was clear that we'd need an online presence to spread the word about our mission, find housemates for our properties, and connect with potential members and partner organizations.

In fact, having a healthy online presence has become a crucial requirement for our legal incorporation process. As a community land trust with a dispersed geographic focus, we need to turn to online networking to discover our community and source their input on decisions like our bylaws and membership structure.

We decided early on to use the .coop identity for our website, which requires all member websites to represent an incorporated cooperative or an organization that promotes or supports them. This is a great fit for us, as it's baked into MALT's mission to help convert existing housing to residential cooperatives and to bootstrap business cooperatives.

For building the website itself, there are a lot of options nowadays. We could create a WordPress or Squarespace, launch a Substack, or code something custom and host it on GitHub Pages or Vercel. Or a dozen more!

Having all those options means it's harder than ever to make a decision! They all have pros and cons. We had to consider a lot of factors in picking a tool:

1. We need a website that anyone can get to without signing up for an app or a social media account.
2. We want the web domain to be short, memorable, and controlled by us. (It's gonna get printed on a lot of materials!)
3. We want to write blog posts, but also send email updates and manage memberships.
4. We want to have some content be public and other content be members-only.
5. We need a tool that offers paid plans (so our website won't disappear overnight), but they have to be affordable at our scale.
6. We need a tool that multiple people can update, without learning how to code. (We only have one programmer living here!)
7. We don't want to fund our opponents, if at all possible. (Consider BDS boycotts in the tech sector, or how Substack is monetizing Nazi content)

These weren't all of our requirements, but they already narrow down most of the list!

There are some interesting "publication-focused" experiments in the ATProto ecosystem (the protocol used by Bluesky), like Leaflet and Whitewind. We do expect to use other parts of this ecosystem, and will likely register a Bluesky account for MALT soon.

However, all of the "blog-on-ATProto" implementations are essentially still tech demos. They don't have features like email subscriptions, payment processing, or multiple editors. They're more suited for an experimentalist programmer's blog than for a community non-profit with diverse membership.

Aside: it's actually a little disappointing that Ghost chose to focus on federating via ActivityPub (the protocol used by Mastodon). The focus on DNS-based ownership (rather than server ownership) makes ATProto a better fit for our needs.

One of the best options we found is Ghost - which is what you're reading from right now! The user experience is a "WYSIWYG editor" blog quite similar to something like WordPress. This isn't a surprise, as it was created by several former members of that ecosystem.

WordPress can feel dated thanks to how long it's been in development. Ghost is newer software that is built around more "modern" features, and feels just as inspired by Substack in the way that it emphasizes membership management and subscriber tiers as a core feature.

As a non-profit with a radical activist mission, we're not interested in "building an audience" of passive participants. However, we are very interested in internet-enabled governance. Older non-profits often require physical meetings and cash dues; that's a hard sell for our intended audience of a diverse membership located all over the greater Boston area.

Another reason we're paying close attention to Ghost (the company) is that it's set up as a non-profit foundation. One of the founders has written a great deal about some of their decisions, including intentionally capping the size of the foundation. Their goals around community input and preventing mission drift are very prescient given everything that's been happening in the WordPress community.

Ghost is still early, and there are still some missing pieces - like not having event management, or an easy system for extensions. But we've found it to fit our needs well, and we think it succeeds at both good user experience and good governance. If you want to take back some control from "platforms" like Facebook, Ghost should definitely be on your radar!