Creating the Modern Creator's perfect website with Ghost CMS
The other day someone was posting about being a multi format creator. I wanted to touch on this because I have been tackling this issue since probably around 2019 if not earlier (prior to ghost i was on wordpress). I've come across podcastpage.io and they almost are a good solution, but idk can't make the switch.
I wanted to make this into a post. as I sent it out to reddit, but I realized this is an important point in my creator journey. Plus if there was more for me to say I could edit it here in the future.
For context I am a prolific blogger with over 630+ blog posts, 4ish newsletters, 3 youtube channels, 2 podcasts, and more. My point here is that my ghost site is my personal brand site, and I want to showcase all of my works through here. I chose ghost because it was the best writing experience and super fast.
I scoured the internet and quite literally saw EVERY ghost theme out there, I went through all 3000 github repos and every aggregator site. P.S. it is truly shameful how monopolistic ghost.io is on theme marketplace.
Coming across godofredo's work I found a solution that sort of helped my situation.
https://godofredo.ninja/ghost-theme/simply/podcast-page/
His themes allow for a custom post type for podcasts. Most podcast themes (and mind you back then it was only hue) they only allow you to have podcast posts INSTEAD of a blog. Or it leads to some weird archive issues, etc.
With his theme I was able to create a separate page for my podcast, and while I don't feel like it was sufficient and with my modifications I almost made it not better to be honest. (ignore my grammar in this post I'm frustrated). It was nice to have the alternative for that aspect of my content.
Couldn't really figure out how to do it for videos, but it would essentially be the same I would think. Just duplicate and change the names/tags/routes. Creating a podcast collection and a video collection.
This got me thinking today when I saw one of his other themes.
https://github.com/godofredoninja/kusi-doc
Which btw is one of like 3 documentation themes, and the free one on the marketplace sucks. and the paid one isn't much better. So shoutout to this godo guy.
I realized that one thing I have been struggling with is that my main niche if you will is around knowledge management. I created my own framework. I realized I could turn this doc theme or method he used, into a Course (btw this would be a great idea for any LMS themes, of which there's only like 1-2).
Thus if I could find a way to showcase the links to each of these collections, and then also have a good flow for the information.
One could create a theme that had Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, and docs. which is what I have been wanting for better half of a decade now. Something that in wordpress would be cobbled together and break. however with the way collections work in ghost I think would be relatively stable and fast.
It is simply a matter of setting it all up. You could even create a make/zapier automation to create a post with a specific private tag for youtube or podcast and have it automatically create the post when you post a new youtube video or podcast.
In the end I know that some custom solutions would be "better", or something like that. However wordpress is not viable in the modern age, and I'm no programmer/coder. I barely knew enough to scrap together my website and modify the theme. I will say I Think I have the most heavily modified ghost site out there though haha https://polyinnovator.space
Shoutout to brightthemes though because for my second website I needed a strong directory theme and their lumen theme is top notch and the web designer making the themes is super smart.
So the idea is to have different content collections for each arm of the content ecosystem.
I like the idea of having the docs turn into a course. I felt like that was the easiest way to accomplish that feat, but it would be only one since it uses the secondary menu. However for the PIOS which is my main thing here on this site for the most part, I felt that it was important enough for that purpose.
Although I wonder if I could just simply create a separate courses collection, and find a unique way of making them.