With the new Stripe Tax integration (beta) in Ghost, you can now effortlessly handle sales tax, VAT, or GST directly at checkout for new paid subscriptions (or tips and donations!), based on what makes sense for your business.

Stripe Tax is a paid add-on for Stripe that helps you monitor where you need to collect taxes, automatically calculates and collects the right amount for new customers, and provides you the reports needed to file returns.

Once the integration is enabled, new paid members going through Stripe Checkout will see an additional field to enter their address. If they live in a location in which you’re registered to collect tax, it will be automatically calculated at the appropriate rate.

Beta testing

We've been testing the new Stripe Tax integration in private with a small group of publishers across the United States, Canada and Europe for the past few months, and it's working great!

Taxes have a long tail of different cases and nuances, though, so we're rolling this beta out manually and working with publishers directly to enable it on their sites.

How to get access

Prior to turning on the integration in Ghost, you'll need to opt-in to the Stripe Tax add-on and configure it via your Stripe dashboard. The process involves several steps, so we've written up a helpful guide to walk you through the full setup:

Stripe Tax Integration (Beta)

Stripe Tax allows you to automatically calculate and collect tax when your subscribers checkout for paid membership.

Ghost Help CenterGhost

If there are ways you think this feature could be more valuable based on the way you use Ghost, we’d like to hear it — feedback@ghost.org.

Subscriptions give your members a way to support your work with a consistent, recurring cadence — but what if someone wants to send you a one-off payment to support your work?

While it’s always been possible to take one-time payments in Ghost, it hasn't been easy. In fact, from chatting with publishers, we discovered no fewer than nine (9!) different methods for doing so.

So, we decided to add support for tips and donations natively in Ghost to make this a whole lot easier.

Starting today, any Ghost publication with an active Stripe connection can have a dedicated payment link that allows your audience to send you a one-time payment.

Find it under Settings → Growth → Tips & Donations.

You’ll be able to set a suggested amount for people to tip, and use your payment link anywhere across your Ghost site; like in buttons, headers, email CTAs, or anywhere else that comes to mind.

Tips & donations can be made by members and non-members alike, and any time someone makes a payment, you'll receive an email notification to let you know.

Ghost(Pro) users can log in and start enjoying all of this right away! If you're a developer, self-hosting Ghost, you'll need to update to the latest version to get access to everything that's new.

If there are ways you think this feature could be more valuable based on the way you use Ghost, we’d like to hear it — feedback@ghost.org.

In the past, if you wanted to link to one of your old posts you’d need to open a new tab, visit your website, track down the post, copy the URL, and paste it back into the Ghost editor.

You told us that was just too many steps, and too many tabs. (Agreed)

Now when you create a link in Ghost, you can search old posts to link to right there in the editor. It works on pages, tags and authors, too.

No more context switches to interrupt your writing flow.

The Ghost Editor is where you live everyday — so we’ve taken our time to get this feature right. First by testing with a small group (thank you all!), and later expanding to over 400 publishers kicking the tires during a beta period.

So far, the feedback we’ve received has been overwhelmingly positive. Turns out writing is faster with less interruptions.

That said, your workflow is exactly that, yours. So if there are ways you think this feature could be more valuable based on the way write in Ghost, we’d like to hear it — feedback@ghost.org.

Ghost(Pro) users can log in and start enjoying all of this right away! If you're a developer, self-hosting Ghost, you'll need to update to the latest version to get access to everything that's new.

By default, Ghost supports payments from members via Credit Card, Apple Pay and Google Pay.

Now, with the Additional Payment Methods (beta), you’ll be able to offer your members the option to checkout via CashApp, iDEAL, Wechat, Revolut, AmazonPay, Direct Debit, ACH, and a long list of other payment methods supported by Stripe.

Why set up additional payment methods

Different payment methods are popular in different parts of the world. In the US it's common to pay for things online with a credit card. In The Netherlands almost nobody uses credit cards, people there prefer iDEAL, a payment system that connects directly to their bank account. In China, AliPay and WeChat Pay are much more popular payment methods than any other.

Unsurprisingly, when a site supports the payment method their customers are most accustomed to and comfortable with, their conversion rates tend to be much higher.

If your audience is predominantly based in a specific region, you will likely want to make sure you support that region's most popular payment methods.

If your audience is international, you may want to consider supporting a wide range of payment methods to appeal to different demographics.

Why a beta?

While we’ve done our best to test and iron out all the bugs, the number of payment method setups you can achieve creates a long tail of different cases. So, we’ve been taking a better safe than sorry approach.

So far, we’ve had over 300 publishers turn on the beta and setup the payment methods that make sense for their audience. Now, after a few months of finding and fixing all the little nuances that have surfaced, we’re ready (and confident) to welcome anyone interested in trying it out.

How to get access

The setup involves changes both in Ghost and Stripe, so we’ve written up a helpful guide to walk you through the process:

Additional payment methods (beta)

By default Ghost supports payments from members via Credit Card, Apple Pay and Google Pay. Enabling the Additional Payment Methods (beta) in Ghost → Settings → Labs will allow you to select more payment methods your members can use from within your Stripe Dashboard. You must enable the setting in Ghost first

Ghost Help CenterGhost

Ghost(Pro) users can log in and start enjoying all of this right away! If you're a developer, self-hosting Ghost, you'll need to update to the latest version to get access to everything that's new.

Lots of Ghost themes use the excerpt field as a subtitle on posts, including our default Source theme. After listening to feedback from publishers, we’ve added an optional setting in the newsletter template to include the post excerpt. Now it's simple for your newsletter to match your site.

Here's how to enable it:

Navigate to Settings → Newsletters → Design and toggle on the "Post excerpt" field.

P.S. – We’re experimenting with ways for you to customize the editor based on how you like to write — starting with adding the excerpt inline as a subtitle.

To try it, navigate to Settings → Labs to toggle on the beta feature.

Feedback on this? Are there other customizations that would make your writing experience better? Let us know at feedback@ghost.org.

Ghost(Pro) users can log in and start enjoying all of this right away! If you're a developer, self-hosting Ghost, you'll need to update to the latest version to get access to everything that's new.

For the past few years, networked publishing has become an increasingly hot topic. Various platforms have allowed writers to follow, like and reply to posts from one another - making writing on the internet an altogether more social experience.

The problem, though, has always been that those networks have been closed, proprietary, and limited in their utility and longevity. We've all seen what happens when networks either run out of money, or get commandeered by people with... too much money.

At Ghost we've been interested in publishing networks for a long time, but as you have come to expect from us after over a decade of releasing open, decentralized technology that puts people first: We're doing things in our own way.

Building ActivityPub

Ghost is federating over ActivityPub to become part of the world’s largest publishing network.

Building ActivityPub

We're excited to share that we've started work on bringing ActivityPub support to Ghost, making it possible for all Ghost publishers to distribute their work across to the largest decentralized network in the world.

It's going to take some time for us to ramp up our efforts here, but we're going to be sharing our build diary and all the details with you as we go.

We've put together a full overview of what this means for you, and we're looking forward to hearing what you think!

Busy authors who file a lot of stories often make heavy use of TK as a placeholder for content which is still "To Come". It's the editorial equivalent of //TODO.

But what happens when you go to publish, and you need to make sure you've finished off all those TK todos?

In the past, you would realize only after it was already too late and tens of thousands of newsletters were flying across the internet on their way to reader inboxes.

Now, Ghost helps by highlighting any instances of TK in the editor margins and warning you if it looks like you're about to publish a post that's still missing some key details.

It's a small detail designed to save you from frustrating mistakes, so you can publish with confidence. Didn't even need AI for this one.

The whole Ghost team has been working on quality and performance improvements for the first few months of 2024 — and we've made some pretty dramatic upgrades (and plans) that we're excited to share with you soon.

Ghost(Pro) users can log in and start enjoying all of this right away! If you're a developer, self-hosting Ghost, you'll need to update to the latest version to get access to everything that's new.

For those of us that like an emoji or two in their posts 🙋 the Ghost Editor just got a little more streamlined. 

Now, you can add any emoji by simply pressing : and continuing to type. No more fiddling with emoji pickers, and no more interruptions to your creative flow as you write 🥳

Ghost(Pro) users can log in and start adding emojis right away! If you're a developer, self-hosting Ghost, you'll need to update to the latest version to get access to everything that's new.

We're introducing a simple cross-promotion mechanism for all publishers, on any platform. Ghost now includes the first native Recommendations feature that's compatible with the entire open web.

In the past couple of years Recommendations have become a super popular way for publishers to support and amplify each other's work — and for good reason! They're a very effective way to grow your audience, so we've had a lot of demand from users to make this possible on Ghost.

The dirty secret about Recommendations, though, is that most platforms have designed them primarily to boost their own growth. You can't recommend anything you like, you can only recommend other people who use their product.

We wanted to give publishers the ability to benefit from cross promotion without limits or hidden incentives, so we decided to do things differently. We built a full Recommendations system for Ghost that's compatible with any platform, website, or publisher out there — so you can recommend whoever you like.

When you share favourite movies with friends, you probably don't limit your recommendations exclusively to titles available on Netflix.

Here's how it works

Get started by curating a list of your favourite publishers and sites. Ghost will show recommendations to new members on signup, and give you simple stats so you can see how recommendations are performing — and who's recommending you.

Recommendations in Ghost work automatically with any site — but also have extra features available, depending on platform support. Where available, Ghost will deliver notifications to other publishers when you start recommending them, with an invitation to recommend you back.

Ghost will also automatically show 1-click subscribe buttons for any platforms that have support for it.

These features are based on open standards, which any platform can adopt and integrate with to become part of the largest network in the world: The open web.

About the beta

We've been trialing recommendations privately with a handful of publishers, and now we're opening it up to everyone. We're releasing this now as a public beta, which means anyone can use it, but we're still working on it.

Expect to see more iterations and improvements, as we learn from how this feature is used once adopted by a larger audience.

Finally, of course, what would a post about Recommendations be without sharing some of our own? You can add a link to show Recommendations anywhere on your site like this:

Recommendations can also be natively integrated into your Ghost theme. Our official themes already have support built-in, and theme developers can explore our new Recommendations Developer Docs.

Ghost(Pro) users can log in and start enjoying all of this right away! You can create and manage recommendations under Settings → Recommendations

If you're a developer, self-hosting Ghost, you'll need to update to the latest version to get access to everything that's new.

With autumn in full swing, we've just finished doing some spring cleaning. Ghost Admin's settings area has had an overhaul and a refresh.

Many new features have been added to Ghost in the past couple of years and, as we introduced new concepts, it became difficult to organise their settings. Multiple workflows required clicking in and out of multiple different screens, just to get one thing done.

Now, we've unified Ghost settings in a single screen with dedicated navigation and search. It's simpler to browse all settings by scrolling to discover them, and it's faster to find a specific setting by searching to find it.

We do know moving settings around can be disruptive to existing workflows, so thanks for your patience with re-training some muscle memory.

Ghost(Pro) users can log in and start enjoying all of this right away! If you're a developer, self-hosting Ghost, you'll need to update to the latest version to get access to everything that's new.

Faster and more robust than ever before, we just shipped a complete rewrite of the Ghost editor. This is our third major iteration of the Ghost editor, packed with new features, including:

• Native image editing - so you can adjust photos on the fly
• Post history - so you can see who edited what, when, and restore old versions
• Landing page cards - so you can build beautiful custom experiences
• Bookmarking - so you can collect links from around the web for your posts

And some fixes for longstanding issues with our previous editor, like:

• Faster overall performance - things just feel more snappy
• Improved handling of very large posts - which, in the past, was... painful
• Better undo/redo chaining - a smoother experience when fixing mistakes
• Much improved mobile editing - so you can write on the go in iOS / Android
• Nested lists - for structuring your bulleted thoughts
  • Which wasn't possible before
    • But is now
• More keyboard shortcuts - find the full list in the post settings menu

The new editor is now available across all Ghost installs. Ghost(Pro) users can log into their sites to give it a try. If you're a developer, self-hosting Ghost, you'll need to update to the latest version to get access to everything that's new.

Developer changes

Keep reading below if you're curious about the technical details behind the new editor, and what it means if you're building API integrations with Ghost.

As we worked on this new editor, one of our main goals was to keep things the same. We made a few visual tweaks here and there, but for the most part it's still the same editor you know and love... it just works better than it did before.

Under the hood, though, the technical changes we've made to the editor unlock exciting possibilities for the future.

Ghost's editor, called Koenig, was previously built in Ember.js on an open JSON-based document storage format called MobileDoc. We loved how it worked, but MobileDoc never became widely adopted, so the technology underpinning our editor became a bit stagnant. This limited our ability to build new features, or solve frustrating core bugs (like better mobile support).

Koenig has now been rebuilt on a new stack: React.js and Lexical — both of which are open source frameworks developed by Meta. So, Ghost is now using the same underlying technology that powers every single editor, comment box, or user input for billions of users across Facebook and Instagram.

Ghost is the first independent company outside of Meta to build a full-scale dynamic editor on top of Lexical, and we worked directly with the Lexical core team to make it happen. Today's announcement reflects over a year of quiet, dedicated work by both teams to get to where we are now.

We have lots of plans for continuing to improve Ghost's editing experience, and this shift in architecture has opened a lot of new doors for what's possible next.

For developers building integrations with Ghost, check out our updated API docs, which cover how to interact with Lexical content stored in the database:

Ghost Admin API Documentation

Manage content via Ghost’s Admin API, with secure role-based authentication. Read more on Ghost Docs 👉

Ghost - The Professional Publishing Platform

Ever find yourself scrambling to remember that great link you found this week to include in your latest post or newsletter? You know subscribers would love to see it... if only you could find your way back to that remote corner of the internet.

Meet the new Ghost Bookmarker browser extension for Chrome & Arc, which allows you to drop any webpage into a draft post in Ghost with a single click.

Ok, fine, 2 clicks.

Here's how it works:

You're reading something you want to drop into a draft post for later, so you click on the Ghost icon in your browser toolbar. That's it.

The Bookmarker extension will automatically insert new links into the same draft post in Ghost. Once you publish the post and bookmark a new link, the Bookmarker extension will simply start a new draft. This makes it really easy to gather together links for a weekly roundup newsletter.

Once you've added the extension to your browser, enter your Ghost site URL and a personal staff token (found at the bottom of your user profile settings in Ghost Admin) to get started.

If you need help getting things set up, check out our integration guide, here:

Official Ghost + Ghost Bookmarker Integration

An official Chrome extension to curate links from around the web and send them to your Ghost site.

Ghost - The Professional Publishing Platform

We're dedicating this feature to our friends Martijn & Mohamed from Revue (Acquired by Twitter, RIP) who used to have an amazing bookmarking extension — which is where the idea for Ghost Bookmarker came from.

Ghost stores multiple versions of your posts as you edit them, in the background, so if you make a mistake or lose some work — you have a handy backup.

Previously, though, recovering post versions was a bit of a manual process. Now, we've introduced a simple new UI so you can browse through your post's edit history and see who edited what, when, and restore any version with a single click.

If we were funny this would be a good spot for a gag about time travel, but we're not funny so here's a video of the new post history feature instead:

Ghost(Pro) users can log in and start enjoying all of this right away! If you're a developer, self-hosting Ghost, you'll need to update to the latest version to get access to everything that's new.

Ghost now has a built-in, native image editor, so you can make quick adjustments to uploaded media without interrupting your flow.

Sometimes you might upload a photo to a post and find that it's almost perfect... if only you could just tweak it a little bit with a simple crop and a filter. In the past that would have involved downloading the image, opening another app to adjust things, exporting it, then uploading it to Ghost again.

Now, all it takes is a few clicks to adjust the image right inside the editor:

Once complete, the edited image is automatically saved and you can pick right back up where you left off. No extra apps required.

Simple edits are fun, but more powerful annotations and adjustments are also possible. For example, if you publish content with screenshots, you might want to highlight certain areas and make sure that a white background on your image doesn't blend into the white background of your site.

By adding a zoom, arrow and border, it's possible to quickly draw attention to the area of the image you want people to focus on:

Ghost's new image editor comes thanks to a new partnership with Pintura, the creators of the editing interface.

For Ghost(Pro) customers, the image editor is automatically enabled and included with every plan — for free! Just sign in to your site to start using it.

For developers who self-host Ghost on their own servers, the Pintura integration can be enabled by purchasing a Pintura license and entering your license information inside Ghost Admin to enable the image editing functionality.

We just released a brand new theme called Source, which is the new default theme packaged with every new install of Ghost.

Source represents a clean, functional design suited to modern publications and newsletters. It comes with simple layout and styling options included, so you can quickly launch a custom site that perfectly matches your brand — without writing a single line of code.

Our goal with the Source theme was to make it as straightforward as possible for new publishers to get started with Ghost, giving them easy access to a range of design settings that cover the most common use-cases we see.

Ghost's previous default theme, Casper, is still available and can be installed from the Ghost Marketplace.

Source is automatically included in all new Ghost installations. If you already have a Ghost site and you'd like to give it a try, Source can be installed directly from the Ghost Marketplace.