![\"Ghost](\"https:\/\/static.gosquared.com\/images\/liquidicity\/14_08_07_ghost_John_O_Nolan_GoSquaredBlog.png\")
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GoSquared supports a number of non-profits with GoSquared for Open Source agreements. Ghost<\/a> is one of our favourites. We sat down with John O\u2019Nolan to talk about how Ghost are building the future of blogging and to talk about why analytics matter for measuring word of mouth.<\/em><\/p>\n I was a contributor to the WordPress design team for a number of years. I had been building blogs for companies for a long time; I was doing everything from travel blogs to food blogs to startups and all sorts. I had a very good idea of how WordPress was used and how the product was evolving. It was moving away from blogging to becoming a full content management system like a Drupal.<\/p>\n Much of the ideas behind Ghost were about making it simpler, more straightforward and focusing on doing one thing very well. I had ideas rolling around in my head and was making lots of notes and sketching ideas. I was thinking, wouldn\u2019t it be nice if you rebuilt WordPress to focus on just blogging.<\/p>\n I presented the idea that would become Ghost in a blog post expecting at most a couple of thousand views but instead received an overwhelming response. It was clear that this idea should actually exist. We then tried to make it happen, launched a successful Kickstarter and I\u2019ve been working on it full time for over a year and we\u2019re now a team of five.<\/p>\n Now some of our biggest blogs are Jeff Adwood with Coding Horror<\/a> or the Inside Envato blog.<\/a><\/p>\n From a technical point of view, it\u2019s the first full fledged blogging platform built entirely in JavaScript. It\u2019s the first blogging platform using Node.js as its framework and the biggest project to utilise ember.js yet.<\/p>\n For the user, it\u2019s just the simplest and easiest to use blogging platform. Ghost is just a blogging platform. If you set up a blog on Ghost, you own the code and you can control the design.<\/p>\n What our customers love about Ghost is undoubtedly the simplicity and ease of setup. There is little that can break or get in the way.<\/p>\n We find GoSquared most valuable for big PR events. We need to know what is working and what is not.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n We\u2019ve been using GoSquared since we launched Ghost. We find GoSquared most valuable for big PR events and launches to assess their impact. We need to know if they are working or not. When we do an announcement, product release or big mailshot, GoSquared is the go to place. We crack open the dashboard to see if everything is working, users are going to the right places and navigating through the site in the correct order.<\/p>\n When we launched Ghost, we were watching the graph spike to 5,000 concurrents. That was incredible.<\/p>\n When we use it on a day to day basis, we want to see what parts of the site are trending or to quickly match this week versus last week.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve also added visitor tagging with our use system which is awesome.<\/p>\n We were watching the graph spike to 5,000 concurrents. That was incredible.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n With GoSquared, we get a simple, valuable overview in a very short amount of time. With Google Analytics, there is so much there and it\u2019s complicated; it\u2019s hard to get a basic overview of anything so you\u2019re forced to always drill down.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve been able to spot downtime before it happens or see a spike of interest before it\u2019s really huge.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The metrics we follow closely are pageviews and what is getting viewed the most. Site referrals are useful and we\u2019ll find a site pop up there and it turns out they\u2019ve written about us.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also valuable for flagging a problem. We get alerts when there is a jump in the number of people online \u2014or if that\u2019s numbers dropped substantially. We\u2019ve been able to spot downtime before it happens or see a spike of interest before it\u2019s really huge.<\/p>\n Everyone is probably different but it\u2019s the basics \u2014they need pageviews and uniques. They don\u2019t need a sophisticated interface, they want something that looks pretty.<\/p>\n In the next six months, we\u2019ll be shipping multi-user support to go after small business and startup teams. We want to integrate with services like Twitter and Buffer. We\u2019re also working on the Ghost dashboard to introduce analytics to the user. And we want to introduce third party app integrations and have \u201cone click installs\u201d for products like GoSquared.<\/p>\n John O\u2019Nolan is the Founder of Ghost.<\/em><\/p>\nHow did you get started with Ghost?<\/h3>\n
![\"Ghost](\"https:\/\/static.gosquared.com\/images\/liquidicity\/14_08_07_ghost_screenshot_GoSquaredBlog.png\")
<\/p>\nWhat is unique about Ghost?<\/h3>\n
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How do you use GoSquared?<\/h3>\n
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What\u2019s most valuable to your team?<\/h3>\n
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What analytics metrics are most important for a blogger?<\/h3>\n
What does the future hold for Ghost?<\/h3>\n
About Ghost<\/h3>\n
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