How I Migrated anukulsaini.com from WordPress to Ghost CMS — A PM's Case Study

There's a moment every developer and PM eventually hits — the moment where the tool you're using starts feeling like a cage.

For me, that moment came with WordPress.

I'd been running anukulsaini.com on WordPress for a while. It worked. It did the job. But every time I wanted to do something slightly custom — add a tool, create a unique layout, build a members-only section — I was fighting plugins, fighting themes, fighting page builders, and honestly, fighting myself.

So I did what any product manager with too much curiosity and not enough free time would do.

I blew it up and rebuilt it from scratch.

Why I Left WordPress?

Let me be clear — WordPress is not bad. It powers 40% of the internet for a reason. But for what I wanted to do, it had become the wrong tool.

Here's what was frustrating me:

• Speed was terrible. No matter how many caching plugins I stacked, the site felt slow. Every plugin added weight.
• Customization had a ceiling. Want something truly custom? You either fight with the block editor, buy a premium plugin, or hire someone to write PHP you'll never fully understand.
• The admin felt bloated. I was maintaining updates for 12+ plugins just to run a personal website.
• Membership and newsletter tools were expensive. WooCommerce + MemberPress + Mailchimp was going to cost me more than I wanted to spend monthly.
• I didn't feel in control. And for a product manager who talks about ownership and autonomy — that felt wrong.

I wanted a platform that got out of my way. Something fast, clean, and extensible. Something I could bend to my will without fighting it every step of the way.

That's when I seriously looked at Ghost.

Why Ghost ?

Ghost is an open-source publishing platform built specifically for creators. Unlike WordPress which tries to be everything for everyone, Ghost is laser-focused — fast publishing, native memberships, newsletters, and a clean architecture that doesn't get in your way.

What convinced me:

• Native memberships and newsletters built in — no plugins, no third-party tools, no extra cost
• Handlebars templating — full control over HTML and CSS without touching PHP
• Blazing fast — Ghost is Node.js based and significantly lighter than WordPress
• Ghost can be self-hosted — I own my data, my infrastructure, my experience
• Tier-based paid memberships — perfect for what I had planned: free tools and paid tools

The plan was clear. Move to Ghost. Self-host it. Build everything custom.

Setting Up My Own VPS From Scratch

This was the part I was most nervous about and most proud of completing.

I'd never set up a VPS from scratch before. I'm a product manager by profession — not a DevOps engineer. But I've always believed the best PMs have enough technical depth to build things themselves when needed.

So I spun up a VPS, picked my server specs, and got to work.

The first thing I installed was CloudPanel — a modern, free server control panel that makes managing a VPS dramatically easier than doing everything raw in the terminal. CloudPanel gives you a clean UI to manage sites, SSL certificates, databases, and more.

Once CloudPanel was running, I used it to install Ghost CMS directly. CloudPanel has a one-click Ghost installer which sets up the entire Ghost environment — Node.js, MySQL, Nginx, SSL — everything configured and production-ready.

What I learned from this:

• VPS setup is intimidating until you do it once. Then it feels obvious.
• CloudPanel is genuinely excellent for anyone who wants self-hosting without becoming a full-time sysadmin
• SSL setup with Let's Encrypt was automatic — took about 30 seconds
• Having your own server means no shared hosting limitations, no surprise traffic throttling, and full control

Building the Custom Theme

Ghost uses Handlebars templates — .hbs files that control every page layout. This was a learning curve coming from WordPress themes, but once it clicked, it felt so much cleaner.

I built my theme entirely from scratch. No starter theme. No template marketplace. Just me, a blank folder, and a design vision.

Here's what I built:

Homepage — A full custom layout with a hero section, about section with animated photo and skill tags, a case studies grid with custom metrics per post (pulled from Ghost's code injection per post), a tools section, testimonials, and a newsletter CTA.

Tools section — I built each tool as a Ghost page tagged with tools. The tools listing page auto-fetches all tagged pages and displays them in a card grid with a price badge (Free / Freemium / Paid) that I control per page via Ghost's code injection — no database, no backend.

Case studies section — Each case study is a Ghost post tagged with case-study. The listing page fetches metrics (like traffic numbers, revenue impact, build time) from a JSON object I paste in each post's code injection header. A small JavaScript snippet on the listing page fetches each post, reads the JSON, and renders the metrics dynamically — no custom backend needed.

Work page — Dedicated listing page (page-work.hbs) that pulls all case study posts and renders them in a full-width card grid with feature images, tags, and metric rows.

Author page — Custom author template with circular profile photo, bio, social links, and a post grid that filters out case studies automatically.

Tag pages — Smart tag routing: /tag/case-study redirects to /work, /tag/tools redirects to /tools, and all other tags get a clean generic listing page.

Every template was Ghost-native — using {{#get}}, {{#foreach}}, {{#has}}, {{codeinjection_head}}, and {{#is}} helpers properly. No JavaScript hacks to work around the templating system.

Building the Tools

This was the most exciting part for me as a PM. I didn't just want a portfolio website — I wanted a platform that actually helped people.

I started building browser-based tools that run 100% client-side. No server, no database, no API costs. Just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript embedded directly into Ghost pages.

Tool 1: Word Counter & Readability Checker
The first tool I shipped. Paste any text and instantly get word count, character count, sentence count, readability scores (Flesch-Kincaid), reading time, speaking time, and more. Built entirely in vanilla JS — no dependencies.

Tool 2: JSON Formatter & Viewer
A full-featured JSON tool with beautify, minify, validate, sort keys, load from URL, upload from file, download, and an interactive collapsible tree viewer. Color-coded output for keys, strings, numbers, and booleans.

Each tool gets its own Ghost page with:

• The tool embedded via HTML block
• Full SEO content explaining what the tool does and how to use it
• Meta title, description, and excerpt set in Ghost
• Price badge set via code injection

The plan is to expand this into a full tools directory — image converters, case converters, JSON tools, SEO tools, UTM builders, favicon generators, and eventually paid tools behind Ghost's native membership paywall.

What Ghost Gives Me That WordPress Couldn't

Challenges I Faced

I'm not going to pretend this was smooth sailing.

Ghost templating has quirks. Nested {{#has}} blocks don't work the way you'd expect — Ghost falls through to the last else. I learned this the hard way when my price badges were all showing "Free" regardless of what tag I set. The fix was using separate independent {{#has}} blocks.

Self-hosting is responsibility. When something breaks at 2am, there's no support ticket to raise. You're the sysadmin. I had to learn enough about Nginx, Node processes, and CloudPanel to debug issues myself.

Ghost's {{#get}} has limitations. You can't do complex relational queries. I worked around this creatively — using slug exclusions (slug:-tools) to prevent the listing page from appearing in its own grid, and using code injection JSON for per-post metrics instead of a database.

No page builder. Ghost's editor is clean but minimal. If you want complex custom layouts, you build them in HTML blocks. This is a feature for me, but it would be a blocker for non-technical users.

CSS specificity fights. Building a theme from scratch means you own every CSS decision. That's powerful but also means there's no safety net — a wrong selector and things break silently.

My Learnings as a PM

Building this taught me things no product management course ever could.

Constraints breed creativity. Not having a plugin for everything forced me to think from first principles. Ghost's code injection per page became my entire dynamic data system. No backend needed.

Ship fast, iterate faster. I launched with one tool, one case study, and a rough homepage. Every day since has been an iteration. Done is better than perfect — especially for a personal site.

Technical depth compounds. Every hour I spent understanding Ghost templating, Nginx configs, and VPS setup has made me a better PM. I now speak the language of infrastructure engineers with more confidence.

Own your platform. SaaS tools can change pricing, deprecate features, or shut down overnight. Owning my server, my code, and my data means nobody can take this away from me.

Design is a product decision. Every layout choice — the 40/60 split on the about section, the floating pills, the metrics on case study cards — was a product decision with a user in mind. My visitors are PMs, engineers, and founders. They expect clean, fast, and credible.

What's Coming Next?

This is version 1. Here's what I'm building next:

• More tools — Image compressor, WebP converter, Case converter, UTM builder, Meta tag generator, Base64 encoder, Regex tester, Favicon generator
• Paid tools tier — Ghost's native membership system will gate premium tools behind a subscription
• Newsletter — Weekly drops for PMs and engineers — tools, frameworks, and growth tactics
• More case studies — Detailed breakdowns of products I've built and grown with real numbers
• Performance dashboard — A public page showing real traffic, subscriber, and revenue numbers

A Note on Numbers

I'll be honest — I'm not going to make up metrics to make this case study look impressive.

The migration is fresh. The tools are new. The SEO is still cooking.

I will keep this case study updated as real data comes in — traffic growth, tool usage, subscriber numbers, and any revenue driven through paid memberships. That's the kind of transparency I'd want from a case study I was reading, so that's what I'll give you here.

Check back. The numbers are coming.

Built with Ghost CMS, self-hosted on a VPS with CloudPanel, designed and developed entirely by me. If you're a PM thinking about doing something similar — feel free to reach out. I'm happy to share exactly how I did it.