I know this is not the kind of question that MPU is made for but I am hoping someone can answer my questions.
I have a blog on Squarespace which I created because I have no coding experience and it seemed the right choice (seeing how I listen to ton of podcasts and we all know how heavily Squarespace advertises there, it’s no surprise).
But after months of deliberation, I have finally decided to move to Ghost. It seems to be a far better platform for blogging. My main problem is that I don’t know how to move my existing posts to Ghost. Since Squarespace only exports XML files and Ghost only imports JSON file, I am at a loss.
First, I want to know if anyone on MPU Forum has made the same switch and can give me some advice. If not, if there’s any resource someone can point me to that can help me with this. Because, I cannot find it anywhere.
I did find this post
And I tried everything that it said. Even learnt how to create package.json file and everything. But I am encountering errors and I don’t have the coding knowledge to resolve it.
Any and all help is appreciated.
TLDR: Need help moving blog from Squarespace to Ghost. For that I need a way to convert XML file to JSON file that Ghost can read.
P.S. Have asked the same question on Ghost forums. But I didn’t know about this problem before creating the free trial and want to see if it is feasible before the trial ends. Hence I am asking here too.
Hey guys it worked. I received help from the Ghost forum. Still have to all the upload all images manually, but at least it’s a start.
I don’t have an answer to your question (I don’t code either) but I do have a question. I too have a Squarespace blog. What is the reason for wanting to move to Ghost? Why is it better for blogging?
The blogs built on ghost are way faster. Squarespace blogs are slow to load, especially if you are writing long posts with many images.
Ghost has a far better CMS backend. Writing posts and publishing it is way easier there. It takes me too much time to create a post on Squarespace.
Ghost is far better for SEO
Ghost offers more integrations with third-party apps.
It has better markdown support and integrates with apps like Ulysses and IA writer allowing me to directly push posts from my writing app to ghosts’s backend.
It’s blogging templates are way cooler.
The only reason to stay with Squarespace as of now is that Ghost is costlier $36 instead of $16 /month.
But I am ready to switch because it is better both for me and for my readers. I have tried everything but I can never get Squarespace’s page load speed time to improve. It just has too many custom code that slows it down.
That is more expensive but not as expensive as the site I thought you were referring to. When I saw this my jaw dropped—that would be expensive. Obviously, this is not the correct Ghost site.
I was also thinking of going the digital ocean route. But It requires more technical knowledge. Ghost Pro, although quite costly ($36/month), takes all the pain away. Do you think the cost is justified or should I invest more time and go the Digital Ocean route?
Can Squarespace export to Wordpress? If it Squarespace supports RSS, you can get import a RSS feed into Wordpress.
You could then use it as a intermdieate step, as Ghost can import Wordpress blogs. If so, you can can use something like Bitnami to create a local install of Wordpress and then move across to Ghost.
I recently moved away from Ghost - I was having issues writing in Ulysses and posting to Ghost, as it was ignoring footnotes (an issue with how Ghost handles writing - cards or something it’s called, and each paragraph is a seperate one. If you import as markdown code, it works perfectly, but Ulysses doesn’t do that). It was also a pain for managing images etc - Wordpress offered a better solution.
It was also fairly slow, but that’s because I was using a low end VPS.
I’ve gone back to Hugo and I’m happier - bit more convoluted to get setup perhaps, but it’s dead quick, as it’s just HTML files, and you can host it virutally anywhere as you don’t have to worry about databases.
I got the code working. If it didn’t work, then using wordpress as an intermediary step was the only choice. I am still figuring things out. I moved to ghost because I want a simple blogging platform and everything else seems daunting. That’s the reason I chose Squarespace in the first place. However after having used it for two years, I have had too many problems to continue using it.
I am still in the testing phase at Ghost. If it doesn’t pan out during the trial period, I will stick with Squarespace until I can find something that is both simple to use and works.
I’ve got a couple of blogs hosted by Wordpress itself (wordpress.com, not the self-hosted software from wordpress.org that can be used anywhere), which have tiers starting at free. I wrote about it throughout this thread and this one too.
I have not used Ghost Pro but I can tell you that the process to host Ghost on Digital Ocean was easy enough for me to use. I had no prior experience and MereCivilian.com is my first website.
I was up and running in less than 30 minutes.
There may be other reasons to go with Ghost Pro but for me, digital ocean and Ghost is just right for now.
I too have a Squarespace blog. What is the reason for wanting to move to Ghost? Why is it better for blogging?
No it’s not that one. It’s this one.