Own Your Voice, Own Your Platform: Why We Chose Ghost and Built Poltertools

The internet has given creators and entrepreneurs an unprecedented ability to share their thoughts, ideas, and expertise with the world. But with that freedom comes a crucial question: Who really owns your content? Suppose you build your audience on social media or a proprietary publishing platform. In that case, you’re at the mercy of ever-changing algorithms, policies, and business interests that may not align with yours.

That’s why owning your voice means owning your publishing platform. In this first installment of our Emancipation & Liberation series, we’re diving into why we chose Ghost for our publishing stack—and why we went a step further by creating Poltertools, an open-source toolkit designed to make Ghost-powered publishing even better.

Why Owning Your Publishing Platform Matters

If your content lives solely on X, LinkedIn, Medium, or Substack, you rent space in someone else’s house. That might be fine—until they change the rules, throttle your reach, or even lock you out.

Here’s what actual ownership gives you:

• Control: You decide what gets published, how it’s displayed, and who sees it.
• Independence: No reliance on third-party platforms that could disappear or shift their priorities overnight.
• Monetization Freedom: Your revenue streams, your terms—without middlemen taking a cut.
• Longevity: Your content remains accessible on your terms, not at the whim of an external service.

For Mental Flares, we wanted a platform that aligned with these principles, so after reflecting on several solutions, we finally landed with Ghost.

Why We Chose Ghost

Ghost is an open-source, modern publishing platform designed for independent writers, businesses, and creators who want to own their content and audience. Here’s why it stood out for us:

1. Open-Source and Self-Hostable: Unlike platforms like Substack, Ghost allows us to run our own instance, giving us full control over our site and data.
2. Performance and Simplicity: Ghost is lightweight, fast, and optimized for content-focused websites.
3. SEO and Customization: Ghost provides excellent SEO features, a clean design, and the flexibility to tweak everything to our needs.
4. Direct Monetization: With built-in membership and subscription features, Ghost enables direct reader-supported publishing—without platform fees or restrictions.
5. Sustainable Business Model: Unlike ad-driven platforms, Ghost is funded by its users, ensuring its long-term viability without reliance on VC-driven growth hacks.

Ghost was a good start. But as we built our publishing workflow, we saw an opportunity to make things smoother. That’s where Poltertools comes in.

Introducing Poltertools: Our Open-Source Toolkit for Ghost

We like Ghost but believe in making great tools even better. Poltertools is our open-source toolkit designed to enhance and streamline the Ghost publishing experience.

What Does Poltertools Do?

Polertools is a set of tools for managing Ghost blog development, backups, and content migration. It enables:

• Local Ghost development environment with Docker
• Easy theme development with live reloads
• Theme packaging for fast deployment
• Full site backup (posts, images, themes) for security and quick migrations
• Restore backups to local or remote Ghost instances
• Simple deployment of a preconfigured docker-based ghost instance with Traefik and optional Cloudflare SSL/TLS

We believe in self-contained, self-explanatory, open-source repos, so follow the instructions in README.md to quickly get up and running with your first self-hosted Ghost instance.

The Path to Digital Freedom

Owning your voice starts with owning your platform. By choosing Ghost and building Poltertools, we ensure that our content and ability to connect with our audience remain in our hands while still being frictionless and convenient.

If you’re a creator, entrepreneur, or writer who values independence, consider moving to a platform you control. The key is to break free from the walled gardens that dictate the rules of engagement.

Stay tuned for more in our Emancipation & Liberation series, where we’ll continue exploring how to reclaim control over your work, time, and freedom.