Alright, so you’re making the leap to Ghost. Solid move, honestly. Ghost is slick, fast, and actually pleasant to write in (try doing that in old-school WordPress, I dare you). As the dev in charge, your job’s basically to make the switch invisible—no angry editors, no broken links, no SEO nosedive. Oh, and you want this thing humming along so maintenance doesn’t haunt you in a year. Here’s how I’d handle it, minus the sugarcoating
1. Don’t Wing It—Map Your Migration Early
First up: sketch out what you’re actually moving. Is it just blog posts? Whole-ass custom CMS? Where’s your media hiding? Are forms and comments sticking around, or are you Marie Kondo’ing them? Write this out. Boring but crucial.
Target’s easy: posts, pages, tags, authors, images, redirects, newsletters, maybe members if you’re feeling fancy.
You want: zero broken URLs. No missing content. Web vitals as good or better than before. Make a redirect map if you change any structure, or you’ll regret it.
Pick your style:
- “Big bang” is fast—everything flips at once, pray for the best.
- “Phased” is less stressful for big sites: move sections, use proxies to blend old and new until you’re done.
2. Audit Your Content Like a Paranoid SRE
List every post and page. Seriously. Grab URL, title, author, date, tags, canonical, template. Flag the weird stuff:
- Orphans (no one links to them? Why are they alive?)
- Overlapping slugs (slug-geddon)
- Giant images and weird embeds
- Junky archives you don’t even want
Don’t drag dead weight. If a section’s useless, archive it or merge it. Your future self will thank you.
3. Nail Down URLs or Prepare for Linkpocalypse
Ghost’s routing: powerful, but don’t get cocky. Mirror your URL structure as much as possible. If things change, create a comprehensive redirect map. Don’t lose your category, author, or old query-string routes by accident.
Pro tip: Don’t mess with slugs unless you absolutely have to. Changing them breaks Google, emails, and your own sanity.
4. Images & Media—Centralize or Chaos Ensues
Store all images in a single, predictable storage path (local or bucket, whichever is used, just be consistent).
Compress big files. Resize stuff. Update URLs within content to point to the new domain. If you have shortcodes or funky embeds, map them to native Ghost embeds or use plain HTML.
And use a CDN. Always. Day one. Otherwise, your images will load like it’s 2003, on a dial-up connection.
5. Don’t Drop the SEO Ball Canonicals
Set ’em right. No duplicate content disasters, please.
Redirects: Keep them versioned in Git, not in some random server file no one remembers.
Meta, Open Graph, social stuff: Double-check that it looks good everywhere you care about.
Schema: Don’t overthink it, just get your basics right.
Sitemaps and robots.txt: Are they visible and working? Complete your migration, then recheck
6. Themes: Build a Real System, Not Frankenstein’s Monster
Get your design tokens sorted (colors, spacing, fonts). Create reusable components (such as buttons, cards, etc.). Less is more—and theme development using Ghost CMS is just that.
Break up templates. Use partials for repeated content, such as headers, footers, author blocks, etc. Avoid stuffing all logic into bloated templates.
Ensure editors can effectively utilize all your attractive blocks—Ghost Cards, pull quotes, code blocks, and long titles. Add CSS so nothing looks busted.
Keep it snappy: Use inline critical CSS, ship modern images, and lazy-load any heavy content. Don’t smother the site with JavaScript—load it only if you seriously need it.
Version everything in Git. Use Ghost’s theme checker before you go live. CI isn’t optional unless you love regrets.
7. Ghost for Commerce & Memberships?
Yep, It Works Ghost + eComm isn’t just possible, it’s actually slick. Pair it with Shopify, Snipcart, Lemon Squeezy, whatever—let Ghost handle the content and memberships, then push users to your cart when they’re ready to buy.
Set up free and paid content to tease folks down the funnel. Ghost tells your story; your cart handles the boring financial stuff.
8. Data Migration: Clean as You Go
Export, transform, import in that order. Normalize dates, authors, slugs, and tags. Don’t just blindly dump categories—think about your taxonomy, or it’ll get messy.
Fix ugly HTML, weirdly nested lists, garbage inline styles, old shortcodes—do this before you import, not after.
Test like you’re QA from hell: sample posts, old and new. Click every link you can. Check images don’t hotlink back to your old site. No one wants broken stuff on launch day.
There you go. Not glamorous, but it’ll save your bacon. Ghost is awesome—just don’t cut corners and you’ll actually enjoy the switch.
9. Launch checklist (clip-and-ship)
- DNS, SSL, CDN—triple-checked. No “oops, it’s down” moments, please.
- Redirects? Mapped, tested, and double-checked. 200s, 301s, 404s—all behaving like good little robots.
- Analytics firing: pageviews, scroll depth, newsletter signups—you want data, you’re getting data.
- Email/newsletter sender domain? Authenticated, because spam folders are where dreams go to die.
- Templates—yes, the crucial ones—actually work on a potato phone and that ancient tablet someone insists on using.
- Error logs are running. If something breaks, you’ll actually know (instead of getting roasted on Twitter).
- Editorial “last mile” test: editors can do their thing—publish, schedule, feature, tag—without pinging devs every five minutes. That’s the dream.
10. After go-live: keep making things better
- Watch your Core Web Vitals and time-to-first-byte like a hawk. Don’t let things get sluggish—people bounce faster than you think.
- Third-party scripts sneak in after launch like raccoons in your garbage. Toss out whatever you don’t need.
- Run tiny experiments—swap out headlines, try different CTA spots. Sometimes one word can make a difference.
- Actually, document your content model and theme conventions. When the new hire shows up, you’ll look like a genius instead of a chaos gremlin.
If you want developers who actually know Ghost CMS and won’t leave you hanging halfway through a migration, CodeClouds is a solid choice. They’ll help you plot, build, and launch—no drama.
Final take
Here’s the deal—Ghost absolutely loves teams who care about speed, clarity, and letting editors run wild (in a good way). Get your basics right: stable URLs, squeaky-clean data, modular themes, and a redirect strategy that doesn’t make you cry. Do that, and your migration feels like a success, not a disaster. Whether you’re spawning a content powerhouse or mixing Ghost with a headless store, this setup keeps things buttery-smooth—both now and when stuff inevitably hits the fan later.
