Let's explore what's new in Ghost, some interesting features that were added or are planned as well as improvements in the last few weeks.
TK reminders in Ghost
In publishing, "TK" reminders are placeholders used during the editorial process
to indicate that certain information needs to be filled in later. "TK" stands for
"To Come", and it's basically the editorial equivalent of using //TODO.
It's a common editorial shorthand used to highlight areas in a manuscript where
information is missing or needs to be updated.
For example, if a writer hasn't provided a specific date or statistic yet, an editor might insert "TK" in its place to remind themselves or the author to fill in the missing information before publication. This helps keep track of what still needs attention in the editing process. Once the missing information is provided, the editor replaces "TK" with the actual content.
In the context of Ghost CMS, when placing TK (or tk ) within a post or page, Ghost will highlight any usage of TK within the margins of the editor, as well as provide a warning, if it looks like you're about to publish a post that's missing additional content.
Planned ActivityPub support in Ghost
ActivityPub is a decentralized social networking protocol based on the ActivityStreams 2.0 data format. It allows different social networking platforms to communicate with each other in a federated manner, meaning users on one platform can interact with users on another platform seamlessly.
Here are some key points about ActivityPub:
- Decentralization: ActivityPub enables decentralized social networks, where users can interact with each other across different servers or platforms. This decentralization helps in fostering diversity, innovation, and resilience in social networking.
- Federation: ActivityPub follows a federated model, where each server implements the protocol to communicate with other servers. This federation allows users to follow, share, and interact with content and users from other servers as if they were on the same network.
- Interoperability: ActivityPub promotes interoperability between different social networking platforms. It standardizes the way social activities such as sharing posts, following users, liking, and commenting are represented and communicated between servers.
- ActivityStreams: ActivityPub uses ActivityStreams 2.0 as its data format. ActivityStreams is a JSON-based format for describing social activities such as posts, likes, follows, and other interactions. It provides a common vocabulary for representing these activities, making it easier for different platforms to understand and process them.
- Security and Privacy: ActivityPub supports end-to-end encryption and provides mechanisms for user authentication and authorization. This helps in ensuring the security and privacy of users' data and interactions on decentralized social networks.
- Open Standard: ActivityPub is an open standard developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). It is designed to be extensible and adaptable to different use cases and requirements, encouraging innovation and collaboration in the development of decentralized social networking platforms.
Overall, ActivityPub plays a significant role in enabling the creation of decentralized, interoperable, and user-centric social networking platforms that prioritize privacy, security, and user control.
The Ghost team is in contact with Buttondown who are also building ActivityPub support right now, and also with teams at Mastodon & the ActivityPub spec authors.
Ghost core improvements
Beyond the main features, there has been a lot of smaller updates and improvements:
- Added srcset and
loading="lazy"to header card images (v5.73.2) - Added option to unsubscribe in one-click from emails (
v5.74) - Added TK Reminders feature (
v5.76) - Improved sending email addresses for self-hosters (
v5.78) - Added option to change the name of the free tier (
v5.79.5) - Added lazy-loading of comments data (
v5.80)
And many more smaller fixes.